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PRICE 50 cts. 





American flovel Series. 

SQUARE 12MO. EXTRA CLOTH, $1.00. PAPER, 50 CTS. 


THE DESERTER and FROM THE RANKS. 

By Captain Charts King, author of “The Colonel’s Daughter,’’ etc. 

BRUETON’S BAYOU, 

By John Habberton, author of “Helen’s Babies,” 
and 

MISS DEFARGE, 

By Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s.” 
Complete in one volume. 

SINFIRE, 

By Julian Hawthorne, author of “Archibald Malmaison,” etc., 

and 

DOUGLAS DUANE, 

By Edgar Fawcett, author of “A Gentleman of Leisure,” etc. 
Complete in one volume. 

A DEMORALIZING MARRIAGE. 

By Edgar Fawcett, author of “Douglas Duane,” etc. 

A NAMELESS WRESTLER. 

By Josephine W. Bates, author of “A Blind Lead.” 

TWO SOLDIERS and DUNRAVEN RANCH. 

By Captain Charges King, U.S.A., author of “Marion’s Faith,” etc. 

THE ROMANCE OF A SPANISH NUN. 

By Alice Montgomery Baldy. 

AN EXCEPTIONAL CASE. 

A Novel. By Itti Kinney Reno, author of “ Miss Breckenridge, ” etc. 

For sale to a11 Booksellers, or will be sent, post-paid, by the Publishers, on receipt of price. 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, 

^ 715 and 717 Market Street, Phila. 


Diana Fontaine 


A NOVEL. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1891 . 




Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



I 


TO MY FRIEND I. K. L., 

CHILD BY WINSOME SIMPLICITY, PHILOSOPHER BY REFLECTIVE 
ABSORPTION OF KNOWLEDGE, WOMAN BY DEVOTEDNESS, 
MAN BY DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE, HERO BY 
STRENGTH, ARTIST BY EXCELLENCE OF WORK, 

ANGEL BY LOFTINESS OF IDEAL; WHOM 
TO SEE IS TO REVERENCE | TO MEET, 

TO REMEMBER; TO KNOW, 


TO LOVE 













































































































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■* 





PREFACE. 


Work, when it is the outcome of a love that opens 
every spring of energy, is love’s benison ; this is the 
true union of spirits, of which bodily marriage is but a 
dim, crude symbol. Such love finds its crown in 
Renunciation rather than in gratification; it mounts 
starward, and has the power of quickening into life 
the artist sheathed within each human being. 


v 




























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* 




DIANA FONTAINE 


CHAPTER I. 

Diana Fontaine was an orphan. After a year 
spent with her mother’s relatives in Newport, she came 
to Virginia to spend a year with her father’s ; after 
which time her guardian thought she would be ready 
to take up the burden of life for herself. The word 
“ guardian” was but an honorary title, though; for Miss 
Fontaine was no heiress. An income of not more than 
seventy-five dollars a year, a. strikingly graceful ex- 
terior, a good deal of desultory information, a rare 
amount of musical feeling and dainty taste constituted 
this young lady’s principal possessions. Her Northern 
relatives thought that she had what they called “ a 
future” before her, and speculated upon its nature. 
Her Southern relatives listened with surprise to a 
girl of eighteen discussing “ values” in pictures and 
“ tonic chords” in music ; for these Southern relatives 
lived in the bosom of an illiterate community among 
the pine barrens of the Shenandoah Valley, and they 
were not accustomed to young ladies who used foreign 
words in conversation, and who were characterized by 
a perhaps too elaborate simplicity. 

The third day after her arrival at the Valley Farm, 
— the Fontaine homestead, — Diana caught herself 

3 


4 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


wondering how she was going to endure life for the 
coming twelvemonth. Yet what could she do? Her 
Newport friends were on the eve of starting to Europe. 
Why, oh, why, could she not go with them ? She had 
spent a winter in Paris with her father, as a child, and 
had been his intelligent companion everywhere; but 
now her life was wholly changed by his death ; now 
must she narrow to the limits of, not an elegant 
economy, but a vulgar frugality, like the people around 
her. How wide the range human nature presents, 
— from the Hessian girl who pronounces guardian, 
gardeen; who delights in such literature as “Leni- 
leoti, the Prairie Flower ;” who wears, for full-dress, 
ribbon-bridles about her neck, and black lace mitts 
upon her hands — all the way up to the daughter of the 
gentler class. A young woman who wears delicately- 
fitting gloves; who wafts about her the scent of the 
finest imported extracts ; who reads Victor Hugo in 
the original ; who borrows from the polite languages 
of Europe those words which embellish her chit-chat ; 
who passes from the charms of a pot-pourri to the 
subtler uses of a priori or a posteriori ; one who peo- 
ples a pretty girlish world of her own with elves, 
heroes, ambassadors, as her mood may be. Such a 
girl was Diana Fontaine, her .spirit an elixir of fine 
feeling, caught and imprisoned in human mould. 

She was no more a beauty than an heiress ; but she 
had striking points. In her former world, some for- 
eigner had called her arms dramatic, and that same 
foreigner had compared her to a figure in a Greek frieze. 
Not that she was pretty, — which implication would 
seem to follow, — but she was interesting. Y ou always 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


5 


wanted to see wliat she was going to do next. Her 
movements were sudden, picturesque, full of expres- 
sion, and her arms — hanging loose, or folded under 
her bosom, or crossed upon her lap, or thrown forward 
when protesting — suggested a wonderful fecundity of 
nature. 

A fanciful German had once said of her, “When 
Miss Fontaine dances, walks, speaks, she is a goddess ; 
at other times, she returns to earth an ordinary mortal. 
I love to see her listen to a rhapsody of Liszt, or a 
polonaise of Chopin ; but when she eats turtle-soup, 
she’s no better than other girls. She has all the ine- 
qualities of a piece of mazurka music.” This fanciful 
German was a musician, whose name is famous. He 
had played for Diana Fontaine, once, and she had re- 
sponded to his touch as if she herself had been the 
instrument. He ended by improvising to her; for 
musicians like to play upon human beings better than 
upon keys and strings. 

Here, on the borders of a miserable village like Pugh- 
town, there was no one, absolutely no one, to sound 
her praises in pretty speeches. Her solitude was 
complete. Such was her melancholy reflection as she 
crossed the foot-bridge that unites the delicious mint- 
banks on either side the run, and then threaded a 
sequestered way, betwixt sumach bushes, towards a 
group of low hills, whose crown of chestnut-oak served 
as her guide, for she was trying to discover the Echo 
Rock, which, she had been told, was less than a mile 
from the farm-house. With one hand she held up her 
dress, a white lawn prigged with red currants ; with 
the other she swung a shade-hat, such as one buys at 
1 * 


6 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the most approved city milliner’s, — a variegated straw, 
decorated with French currants of exaggeratedly juicy 
appearance, bunched amid loops of black velvet ribbon. 

At first she looked about her languidly, but soon 
her glance brightened, for she perceived that she had 
not left beauty far away in the North ; no, there was 
plenty of it here around on every side. A field of 
timothy between the foldings of the hills swept on one 
side of her, a mass of gay plumes in the summer sun- 
shine; or here and there, broken into gloom by an 
overshadowing walnut- or mulberry-tree, it shaded off 
into the most delicate green tassellings, such as would 
have suitably bordered the robe of a dryad. Diana 
stretched up to gather a handsomely-cut leaf from the 
bough that swung over her head, or stooped to snap 
off a vine, winding it about her hair; or to pull a 
clump of daisies that stole into the foot-path from the 
adjacent field ; for, though a woman, she had the tastes 
of a nymph. “ I have read in books,” she whispered 
to herself, “ that solitude is a kind of mental chastity. 
I nev§r realized it before ; but I do now. If any one 
else were here, it would drive my society away.” 

She descended into a ravine, hemmed in by slate 
cliffs, and dark with growths of evergreen ; then paused, 
mused, listened to her heart beat. There was an ex- 
citement in adjusting her sympathies to this wild spot, 
after feverish recollections of New York City, and its 
metropolitan pleasures. Calling Nature a nun, and 
the ravine a cloister, Diana moved on, but stopped soon 
again at the base of the cliff, where it stood almost 
perpendicular, arid said within herself, “This must 
be the Echo Rock, of course. I will see what I can 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


7 


do to rouse the spirit of sound.” Tossing her shade- 
hat to the ground, and bending back, so to command 
her voice, she cried aloud, in a piercing tone, “ Echo.” 
“ Echo” was rung back in a tone clearer and stronger 
than hers. “ How strange !” she thought ; “ that is 
not like my voice.” Then rebuking herself for ex- 
pecting a ludicrous imitation of it, like the phonograph, 
she reminded her imagination that a woodland echo 
should be delicately poetic, the spirit of a voice, not 
its ghost, like the prosaic phonograph. One is the 
sprite Ariel, a nature beautiful, wild, untamed; the 
other, Caliban, a nature enslaved and man’s servant. 

“ Come,” said the girl to herself, “ you shall be my 
playmate. I will be the nymph ; you shall be the 
youth she loved. Narcissus was his name, I think.” 
Thus lending herself to fancy, and placing hand upon 
hip, she shouted out, — 

“ Narcissus, my love.” 

“My love,” was the return, so rounded and full, 
that Diana blushed, standing all by herself in the 
ravine. She felt as if she, the nymph, were apostro- 
phizing this lover too openly; and this thought re- 
volted the modesty of her maidenhood ; for a bright, 
imaginative girl is never quite alone. Her thoughts 
are witnesses ; the air around her lives. The situation, 
however, was piquant, and she could not resist it. 

a I am your friend ; who are you ?” was her next 
appeal. 

“Are you ?” came back from the bosom of the hills 
with thrilling distinctness. 

“ Yes; are you my friend?” she returned. 

“My friend” responded the second part in this 


8 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


dialogue, and with real feeling. Truly, it was un- 
canny ; but Diana kept up the sport. She had been 
lonely before starting on her walk ; now, she was infi- 
nitely amused. She would always come here when 
she was melancholy, this chatty cliff-spirit would cheer 
her. 

“ Keep your promise,” she cried, with finger on lip. 

“Promise,” rang back. 

Evidently the masculine principle of the hills knew 
how to extract promises as well as she. But Diana 
laughed, as women will, when asked to keep faith. 
Deluding creatures ! Diana could no more help flirt- 
ing with the mountain’s voice than she could have 
helped flirting with man himself, had he been present. 
Her laugh, however, was conscientiously taken up by 
the cliff, and there followed an answering “ Ha ! ha !” 
The rock laughed on in a deep, manly way for a 
minute, and then silence intervened. 

“ You are a jolly fellow,” said Diana, in her natural 
tone ; then, in a higher key, so as to provoke a reply, 
“ You are not love-lorn.” 

“ Love-lorn” was immediately wailed back from the 
hill, with a jocular imitation of grief. 

“Let me console,” was the response, a phrase so 
cunningly arranged that it ensured the answer, “ Con- 
sole,” sent back so heartily as to appear a genuine 
appeal. A dialogue need not be original on both sides 
to charm. Many a woman has condescended to fall in 
love with a man who was little more than a flesh and 
blood echo to her. Sitting down upon a slab of slate, 
she asked, in high treble, innocently enjoying the 
advances she felt free to make, — 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


9 


“ Would you like to know my name?” 

“ Name,” was the reply, given authoritatively. 

“ Diana ” was rung back, and then, — 
tc Diana” repeated the hidden voice, with such a 
pleasant familiarity ; and so near, apparently, that the 
girl, addressed, sprang up from her seat and looked 
around startled. What if somebody were concealed in 
the boscage that clustered, a green patch, on the grayish 
rock, and were taking advantage of her gullible imagi- 
nation. She determined to tempt the “ somebody” to 
further speech, so she shouted, with less of fun, per- 
haps, than excited curiosity, “ Come hither.” 

“ Hither” shouted the cliff, this time with a shade 
of delicate reserve in its voice. Too late. Diana’s 
eyes, now on the alert, descried a large gray spot on 
the slaty hill-side, under a canopy of tree boughs. 
The spot moved ; and then she knew that it was a 
man she saw lying flat on the ground, trying to hide 
himself behind tufts of young growth. As soon as he 
knew that he had been detected, this man half-rose, 
creeping along on all-fours until he could reach a more 
sloping part of the declivity ; then he swung himself 
down to the foot-path in haste, there to find the young 
lady who had been fluting forth all these pretty speeches. 
He saw her, however, in a changed mood ; she stood 
in the pathway, her nostrils a-tremble, her fingers 
daintily holding up one side of her muslin gown. 
Her fine-tissued cheeks were full of color ; her brown 
hair as full of vines and wild flowers as if she were 
Ophelia ; but there was none of the insane maiden’s 
glance in the direct eyes which held in them a spark 
of indignation. She was wroth with the intruder. 


10 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


She would punish his impertinence, so she stood ready 
to discharge a look which should be an arrow, and 
then turn her back and walk away in the silence of 
disdain. But after her eyes had rested for a few 
moments upon the tall, awkward man with slouching 
gait who now fronted her, she felt her anger merge into 
a kind of pleased curiosity. He had sprung down the 
sides of the cliff with joints of elastic. How did he 
contrive to wind those long legs through the under- 
growth without getting them into a hopeless tangle? 
That this man was no boor, Diana recognized at once. 
Good breeding is as quickly discerned by the well-bred 
as if it were a badge worn on the sleeve. The inter- 
loper was ugly, to be sure ; but then Nature does not 
caress every man into beauty; sometimes she gives 
him a knock instead of a pat ; but a woman, however 
aesthetic, does not object to ugliness in the other sex, 
provided there is character in the ugliness. There was 
a great deal of character in the weather-beaten face 
now turned upon the young lady, and a great deal of 
honest, boyish mirth in the smile that accompanied the 
words, — 

“ Excuse me, miss. Miss : I reckon I can call 

you Miss Diana. You told me your name, you re- 
member ?” 

Diana did remember, and laughed. There was an 
easy-going, respectful friendliness in the man’s manner 
which attracted her. She would not have questioned 
his gentlemanhood so quickly as she would have done 
that of the dudish Newporter who had taken her and 
her cousins out in his yacht. The new-comer, crushing 
a felt hat against his chest in a rather ludicrous way, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


11 


proceeded to make his apology with a mingling of shy- 
ness and frankness just a little dashed with mischief. 

“ Excuse me, Miss Diana, for playing at echo. It 
was mighty bad manners ; but it was irresistible. You 
were so friendly, indeed I could not help it. Then I 
had to try my vocal powers, which you complimented 
by mistaking them for a sure-enough echo ; afterwards 
I felt ashamed at having fooled you so well, and I 
determined you should never be the wiser; but you 
were too quick, so I came down to beg your pardon ; 
and, if you w T ill allow me now, I will show you the 
real Echo Rock ?” 

“Then this is not Echo Rock, and none of the echoes 
were real ones?” She knew that she had been cheated, 
but not how much. 

“Nature has not deceived you, but wicked man,” 
was the answer to her half incredulous look. “ I con- 
fess the fraud ; but let me make amends, and show you 
the real rock ; it is only a few hundred yards from 
here. The path which crosses this one at the mulberry- 
tree, a short distance back, would have led you to it 
direct ; in which case, however, we should never have 
had this meeting, — a very agreeable incident to me, 
Miss Fontaine.” 

Diana, rooted in the pathway, no longer cared for 
the echo now : it seemed to her a childish amusement. 
In proof of which change in her opinions, she began 
to strip herself of the vines clinging to hair, neck, 
and waist ; while she murmured something about men 
having their rights and women being defrauded of 
theirs. Her pettishness was winsome, and her voice, 
trilling upon a querulous F sharp, elicited a smile from 


12 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


her companion. Both words and change of mood con- 
veyed a challenge, but found him indulgent. He an- 
swered with deference, while his full gray eyes kindled 
within their deep sockets, — 

“ Woman is entitled to all the rights of man, and 
one more, — his protection. I would like to do you a 
service to show that I did not wantonly intrude upon 
your solitude, Miss Fontaine.” 

Diana was conciliated by the unexpectedly chival- 
rous manner of this great, loose-jointed, long-legged 
fellow, who carried his ugliness as proudly as the ten- 
tined stag does his symmetry ; and who, in spite of a 
humorous appearance of shyness, produced a wonder- 
ful effect of strength and animal magnetism. “ Pray, 
how do you know that my name is Fontaine ?” she 
inquired, waiving the subject of Echo Rock and lean- 
ing against a tree to invite conversation. 

“ Partly by instinct. Besides, I have heard of Billy 
Fontaine’s granddaughter, brought up in New’ York, 
and coming on a visit to Pughtown. Partly by infer- 
ence. I know the young ladies within a radius of ten 
miles, — and I knew you were none of these.” 

The warmth of a broad, yet kindly sympathy lit up 
the young man’s rude features, making them almost 
handsome, as his -glance took in, with the alertness 
peculiar to observant minds, the delicate fingers, the 
finely-tissued web of skin of this young lady who 
fronted him, with chin eagerly lifted. She was pleased 
at making a new acquaintance; indeed, there was a 
vivacious sense of mutual inquisitiveness between them. 
Plainly, the graft upon the old Fontaine stock had 
produced a new, and, it must be confessed, charming 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


13 


variety. How did the inward match the outward 
qualities ? The keenest eyes do not fathom this with 
a glance. 

“ I am less fortunate/’ she replied, “ for you do not 
carry your name upon your face, as I appear to do.” 
Her chin, her tone, her eyes were interrogative. 

“ Loughborough (Luffborough),” was the brief an- 
swer. 

“Are you the doctor whose sign I saw in the village 
when riding in for the mail ?” 

Loughborough bowed. He had observed the young 
lady ride into Pughtown on one of Grat Fontaine’s 
farm-horses, and had thought it a thousand pities that 
such a well-formed girl should ride so badly, and be 
mounted on so rough a cob. 

“Speaking of names, Miss Fontaine, yours seems 
sacred to fiction. I never met a real Diana before : 
those of romance were wonderfully clever, you know ?” 

Of course she knew. Miss Fontaine was fantasti- 
cally literary ; but she had a rich vein within, some- 
times obscured, sometimes apparent. She was not 
commonplace; perhaps too capricious. You never 
knew quite how to take her ; but she was saved from 
eccentricity and affectation by a strain of sincerity and 
tact. The bearer of the pretty name could find no ex- 
cuse for offence at the compliment, which implied ad- 
miration of herself without being grossly personal; 
for Diana, like most women, doated on phrases and 
compliments, if these last were not too pointed. 

“ You like my name ? Yes, I believe the Dianas of 
fiction have been clever, — Diana Vernon and the great 
Diana. But you make me discontented with my name, 
2 


14 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Dr. Loughborough, for I shall be a noticeable exception 
to your rule of clever women.” 

Loughborough shook his head, but looked amused. 
There is something pathetic in the beseeching glance 
with which young girls sue for compliments. It is a 
touching pantomime, because the outcome of instincts, 
as the nibbling of tid-bits is a part of the squirrel’s or 
the wren’s. 

“ My father was in Europe when I was born,” she 
gravely explained, as if she were some personage in 
history. “On his return from a celebrated gallery, 
he wrote my mother a letter, in which he said, ‘ If I 
were to choose a model from the statues, I would have 
Niobe for my mother, Venus de Medici for my sweet- 
heart, Venus de Melos for my wife; but one of the 
Dianas should be my daughter.’ So I was christened 
Diana.” 

“A charming story. So you are modelled upon 
Diana. Are you cold, like marble, or cruel, like that 
classic virgin ?” 

Loughborough speculated. There was something 
disturbing in this young girl, with her imagination 
nourished upon romance, her voice steeped in the honey 
of the subtlest culture. She was different from the 
women he had been accustomed to. They might be 
excellent daughters, obedient wives; but their luke- 
warm minds, occupied with preserve-making, pro- 
tracted meetings, or trips to town for small shopping, 
failed to agitate. Here was a girl who kept you strung 
up ; one who floated in an atmosphere of golden sheen 
like Turner’s pictures. Even Pugh town seemed irra- 
diated with it. The cows seeking shade under a pig-nut 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


15 


tree in the field, the sumach berries slowly ripening in 
the sun, the slate rocks mellowed with the afternoon 
brilliancy, all were full of superb suggestion. 

“Cold,” echoed Diana, with the slightest possible 
shiver, as if she felt the word; “cold is negative; 
heat positive. No, I would be in a glow, Dr. Lough- 
borough. Warmth is life. I love life.” 

She wreathed her supple arms about her brown- 
braided head, and looked upwards towards the great 
terminal blue of the July firmament as if she would 
crown herself with the gladdening immortality we all 
aspire to. 

“The passionate heart alone is pure,” murmured 
Loughborough, placing his hat on his head and turn- 
ing away from his companion, as if he feared to feed 
his susceptibilities longer upon her eloquent motions. 
He was the first to realize that they were playing with 
fire, and that they had best lay down the dangerous 
plaything. 

Woman is more recklessly indiscreet than man. The 
siren that hid in the depths of Diana’s eyes stirred and 
emitted one single alluring glance. She had trembled 
more than once upon the verge of love, but had been 
whisked away before getting the desired taste. She 
longed to transgress the bounds of a narrow experi- 
ence, as Rasselas longed to emerge from his happy 
valley. She, too, desired ardently, though half un- 
consciously, as maidens do, to look into Love’s face, 
once, at least, as Psyche, immortal maid, yearned to 
look into Cupid’s. 

They walked along silently for a while on the way 
to the farm-house, surprised at the rapid stride they 


16 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


had taken towards acquaintanceship ; but etiquette is 
an artificial fetter, and out of doors is thrown to the 
winds. Diana felt herself steal into a shy intimacy 
with this lumbering, ugly man at her side, who looked 
down upon her with that large-hearted indulgence of 
glance which wins all natures, from the dog’s up. She 
felt that she could trust herself wholly with him. His 
very ugliness fascinated. It seemed to be the man’s 
prerogative, and was accompanied by conscious energy. 

“ Do you know, Dr. Loughborough,” she began, in 
a burst of naive confidence, as they sauntered along 
past the sumach bushes which shut them in from the 
timothy field, “ I thought, somehow, that "Virginia was 
much grander than it is. I am disappointed in it.” 

“What is the matter with Virginia, Miss Fontaine? 
Is it the mountains you do not like ? Is not the Blue 
Ridge grand enough for you? Or is it the North 
Mountain that fails to come up to your standard ?” 

Loughborough’s irony was usually of the wholesome 
kind, and curative, like his surgeon’s knife. 

“Oh, the Blue Ridge is all right, and the North 
Mountain. It is not the scenery, I mean, but the 
people, and their ways, and their houses.” 

Loughborough shed a keen glance from the corner 
of his eye upon the nymph at his side. He could well 
understand that Pughtown and its surroundings were 
alien to the sympathies of a young woman who read 
French as well as English, who aimed at classic poses, 
and who prided herself upon the purest enunciation of 
her native tongue. Nevertheless, he feigned obtuseness. 

“ What is lacking in our people, in their ways, and 
in their houses ?” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


17 


“Why, I thought the people were of English de- 
scent; instead of which most of them are German. I 
expected to see Colonial houses, with old portraits and 
silver ; people whose ancestors had signed the Declara- 
tion, or had discovered the Valley under Spottswood ; 
women who entertain delightfully ; men who quote 
Latin and are daring horsemen.” 

Diana broke off abruptly ; she was quite overcome 
with anger, that the people should be so different from 
what she had expected. 

“ Have you seen the men about here ride ? If you 
have, you will certainly find no fault with their horse- 
manship.” 

Loughborough’s championship was for those who 
needed it. He was no renegade Virginian, and must 
take up the cudgels against this young critic, strenuous 
for her tastes. 

He asked abruptly, — 

“Have you’ seen your uncle, Grat Fontaine, ride?” 

“ What should he ride? We have nothing on the 
farm but wretched, old work-horses,” she laughed, sar- 
castically. Young women expect to find their world 
as perfectly appointed as a drawing-room. 

“ Do you know why ? Those horses you call wretched 
have done years of gallant service during the war. 
Who has a right to look wretched, if not they ? Who 
has a better right to be wretched than we, their masters, 
— a nation of conquered men? And yet you laugh 
at us.” 

Diana grew serious ; she had not thought of things 
in this way before. She had looked for Virginia to 
step forth upon the stage of her life, figuring in a 
b 2* 


18 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


comedy, among bugle-notes ; instead of which, Lough- 
borough represented her as a fallen queen, in tragedy, 
not comedy, and surrounded, not by bugle-notes, but 
by drum-beats, that ushered in disaster and defeat. 
She had a fertile fancy, and she listened attentively for 
what her new acquaintance should say next. She had 
never felt strongly about anything in her life except 
her own vexations; now, however, she was pricked 
with real curiosity about something that was national. 
To her the war had been the subject of newspapers, 
the cause of lint-making, sanitary fairs, vituperation 
of Southern relatives, and a show of Union colors; 
now, however, fully grown, standing on Southern soil, 
under the shadow of Loughborough’s coat of Confed- 
erate gray, and thrilled by his solemn enthusiasm, the 
war suddenly arose to the majesty of history. Marl- 
borough, Napoleon, and Caesar had in turn touched her 
sensitive, virgin soul ; why not Lee, Jackson, Stuart, 
and Ashby? 

Loughborough intended they should. He spoke of 
them, and made Diana thirst for the heroism of the 
old war-times, in which man, woman, child, horse, each 
had played his part. 

“ Have you seen Captain McElroy ride, Miss Fon- 
taine ? He is an Arab on horseback. He was with 
your uncle in Ashby’s brigade ; and I tell you they 
made some brilliant charges.” (Diana had caught a 
glimpse of McElroy when going to Pughtown for the 
mail, and she had pronounced him gentleman-like.) 
“ He was unhorsed at Manassas,” Loughborough went 
on. “ I saw him kneeling on the ground beside the 
dying beast that he loved as a younger brother. It 


DIANA FONTAINE. 19 

was in the midst of these lines, said into the poor 
animal’s drooping ear, — 

‘ Woe worth the chase ! woe worth the day, 

That cost thy life, my gallant gray ’ 

that a Yankee tapped him on the shoulder, with the 
order, ‘ Get up, sir ; you are my prisoner/ ” . 

Diana was amazed. Her Newport friends had smiled 
„at the “Rebs.” She, too, had come to think them 
either very mistaken or very commonplace. But now 
Loughborough glorified them ! Were these youths, 
many of whom had never been to college, and most of 
whom could not speak decent English, were they really 
heroes, after all ? 

“ There is not a boy in this valley, Miss Fontaine, 
who could not tell tales that would thrill you.” 

Loughborough was not a man of abundant conver- 
sation, nor was he given to much quotation of poetry, 
but he murmured, as they walked along, Diana’s gown 
making a silver shirr against the thick growths of 
timothy, — 

“ Years sung by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon, 
Hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted years .’ * 

“Go on, Dr. Loughborough,” interrupted Diana; 
“ what you say does me good. It makes me feel so 
intensely living ; but does all seem like a hideous dream 
to you, now that it is over ?” 

Loughborough shook his head. 

“ I had feelings then that I shall never have again. 


20 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Oh, the horrors of the Hotchkiss shell ! Shall I ever 
forget its shriek? Men were killed by the wind it 
made, that was hideous ; but there was a tuneful sing- 
ing of the minnies that I remember with sensations of 
delight, sometimes, when I would be lying in the 
trenches. Once I caught the pitch of a minnie as it 
swung over my left ear. It swelled from E flat to F, 
then it receded to D, — so.” 

Loughborough whistled a cadence by way of illus- 
tration. Diana caught the strain from his lips, and # 
transposed it to a different key upon her own. 

“ Ah,” she exclaimed the next minute, with extreme 
sadness, “ what am I ? A creature totally without ex- 
periences. No one can be poetic without them.” 

Her companion could not forbear a laugh at the dis- 
comfiture in her countenance and the discontent in her 
voice. 

“ Experiences have to be purchased dear,” he said. 
“ Your grandfather, Squire Fontaine, as he was called 
about here, paid for his with life. But you know the 
story, of course ?” 

Diana shook her head ; she did not know it ! 

Loughborough looked surprised. 

“ Squire Fontaine was as handsome and stately an 
old gentleman as ever I laid eyes on. You would 
have thought that the Yankees might have respected 
his white hairs, and left him undisturbed. But a 
squad of Blues met him one night, the first year of the 
war, riding out of Winchester. They ordered him to 
dismount and give up his horse. This he did without 
a murmur. But a ten-mile walk home was too much 
for a man of seventy, who during his whole lifetime 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


21 


had never gone outside his farm except in the saddle. 
He went to bed that night as usual, but no one saw 
him alive again. He died in sleep, they suppose. 
Some say of a broken heart ; others, of mortification or 
over-fatigue. They do not know which ; but he was 
a loss to this community. Your grandfather was a 
man of force, and greatly respected all through this 
country, Miss Fontaine.” 

Diana’s mind was not the abode of hardened convic- 
tions. It was tender to sentiment ; and herein lay her 
power. Loughborough recognized and played upon 
this susceptibility. He thought she would be a charm- 
ing girl without her self-consciousness and her passion 
for the aesthetic, which she had not as yet learned to 
fortify with judgment. He pursued a little sarcasti- 
cally,— 

“ If you want Colonial houses, old portraits, silver, 
and such bawbles, Miss Fontaine, you should go to 
middle or eastern Virginia ; the Valley may be outdone 
in elegance, though not in bravery .’ 5 

They stepped across the foot-bridge, Loughborough 
leading the way ; and as Diana caught glimpses of the 
farm-house through the willows, and of the rocky road 
that led up the hill past the wood-pile, where Wesley, 
the colored boy, leaned on his axe with all the medita- 
tive solemnity of Hannibal among the ruins of Car- 
thage, she felt that everything was changed, some- 
how. And yet could you have found a less significant 
habitation than this hip-roofed farm-house, no less 
than three cottages joined to each other, like three little 
sisters, all wearing white aprons, holding hands and 
squatting down upon a plot of grass not too well kept. 


22 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


The first of these cottages had received Billy Fon- 
taine (hero of Loughborough’s tale) and his bride in the 
beginning of the century ; the additions having been 
made for the convenience of the twelve children who 
overgrew the narrow bounds of the primitive house- 
place. Never did roof-tree protect a more choleric old 
Whig than this Billy, who went to the Legislature 
whenever he wanted, fought innovation, then came back 
to his rocky nest among the pine barrens of Frederick, 
and had it out there with such of his neighbors as did 
not happen to be of his opinion, but who, nevertheless, 
sat down with him on the long low porch ; and, with 
feet raised to the top of the porch-rails, and tobacco in 
mouth, talked, wrangled, and made-up, for the period 
of half a century. 

At the palings, Loughborough took his leave with 
the word, — 

“ With your permission, I will call before long, 
Miss Fontaine.” 

When he was gone, Diana leaned against the gate 
and mused. While Loughborough was talking, she 
saw the old homestead transfigured. She had begun 
to appreciate it by a kind of reflex action, her mind 
warmed by tales of action ; but, now that he was gone 
and his tales turned into the chill of mere memories, 
she began to feel the meagreness, the utilitarian prim- 
ness and the poverty of the place settle down upon her. 
Her fancy had soared, now it dropped on leaden wings. 
She counted the newspapers islanded on the shed-roof 
of the porch, and holding layers of peach-leather 
spread out to dry; or quarters of summer-apples 
undergoing the same desiccating process. The win- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


23 


dow-sills of the upper story were yellow with tomatoes, 
set there by a careful hand to ripen more quickly than 
in the shady garden. What mattered it to Diana 
Fontaine that this sun-dried store was destined to fill 
up gaps in winter meals. Economy, foresight, pru- 
dence, were to her like the sage-leaf, the lavender, the 
parsley, — very good for seasoning, but only of a dried- 
up, turkey-stuffing value. No ; give her love, heroism. 
These were the gorgeous flowers of a summer garden 
not destined to season a dinner-dish, but born to be of 
immortal beauty. She was as unconscious of the pies 
that were intended to eke out next winter’s dinners as 
the peach-leather and apple-slices that were going to 
make them. The grass-plot around the house was not 
even adorned with flowers, she thought with a sigh. A 
damask rose in the comer of the fence, and a parcel of 
bee-hives on the opposite side under an althea bush, 
gave evidence that there was a wide disparity in the 
views entertained by Miss Mary Jane Fontaine and 
her niece as to the essentials of life. 

“ Well, honey, ’mos’ ready for tea?” 

The voice which broke in upon Diana’s rather dis- 
contented reverie was her aunt’s ; for Miss Mary Jane 
appeared in the doorway of the first cottage, clad in a 
lilac lawn. 

“ Tea !” ejaculated Diana, amazed. “ Why, it’s only 
five o’clock.” 

“ Yes, honey; but Ailsie has been busy making pies, 
and I’ve been putting up ketch-up, and your uncle’s 
in from the field, and I thought we’d have a bite good 
and early, so’s all hands ’round could rest.” 

Tea was an occupation, and not a disagreeable one, 


24 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


either, at Miss Mary Jane Fontaine’s table, where the 
milk was half cream, the honey made under your very 
eyes in the garden outside, the smoked sausage hot 
with pepper, and the crispest frying ; the flannel-cakes 
of the perfectest tint of yellow brown, like the cheek 
of a Cuban lady. 

“ Very well. I am ready for tea : I believe I always 
am.” 

Diana unfastened the gate and entered. To her 
Miss Mary Jane Fontaine was an anomaly ; while to 
Miss Mary Jane, Diana was a prodigy, a creature over 
whom to clasp your hands and to shake your head, if 
you should happen to be demonstrative. Miss Mary 
Jane was not. She was past fifty-four, and had never 
been young. Her pleasures, like her sweet pickle, con- 
tained the faintest suspicion of sweet enveloped in as 
mild an acid. Even her sorrows were more a dreari- 
ness that clogged the spirits that an overmastering 
emotion which scorched. The generation to which 
she belonged had been characterized by double appel- 
latives, such as David-Henry, John-William, George- 
Frederick, Marthy- Alice, Mary-’Liza, and Sarah- Jane, 
which must account for the fact that the elder Miss 
Fontaine’s name appeared under the form of doublets, 
both of them conscientiously adhered to. This was 
an advance upon the preceding generation, which re- 
joiced in the Scriptural name ; and it was a half-way 
.house between the last and the modern elegance of 
titles, such as Be-a^-rice, Lu-i-sa, Law-ra, Beu-lah, 
Io-ta, and the like, which showed the young girls 
now growing up in the valley to be lusty damsels 
skipping out of a fourth- or fifth-rate novel. Miss 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


25 


Mary Jane’s views of the world consisted of single 
isolated notions. She did up the Italians in a single 
line, such as might fit into a kiss-paper. To her they 
were all revengeful. Had she been imaginative, she 
would have conceived of them as a nation of poison- 
takers. The Spaniards were all swarthy, not a blue 
eye to be found in the nation. She had every French- 
man “ unreliable from A to Izzard while all heathen, 
from the beginning of the world up to the present 
day, were as much alike as black-eyed peas or pewter 
spoons ; for variety as a quality was unrecognized by 
the elder Miss Fontaine, and history a thing to be 
epitomized. Her niece’s literary tastes were of the 
calendar style ; her own were of the weighty. She had 
read Dr. Jay, Richard Baxter, Dr. Taylor, Fox’s “ Book 
of Martyrs,” and advised Diana to take up “ Conver- 
sations on Chemistry.” To her, piety was shown by 
muteness, negation, and sedateness. Everybody, how- 
ever, has light tastes tucked away somewhere, and when 
Miss Mary Jane desired to regale this part of her 
nature, she read the religious newspaper and the older 
numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine , stacked up in 
the front parlor under her father’s portrait. Every- 
body must possess some sentiment. Miss Mary Jane’s 
did not show in her literature nor in her conversation ; 
but it lurked somewhere, — upstairs in the bureau- 
drawer, where a daguerrotype lay cradled in the only 
lace handkerchief which this lady had ever possessed, 
and which had been sent her from Paris by Diana’s father. 
The Parisian lace had seemed to her a little wicked, 
thus wantonly displayed upon a handkerchief ; but she 
guarded it none the less with a timid reverence. In 
B 3 


26 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the closet under the stairway, where the beam was so 
low that it hit your head as you entered, was another 
keepsake, — an ashes-of-roses silk dress, the present, 
also, of Diana’s father, made and worn when she was 
just twenty-one ; but it was as good to-day as when it 
was new, nothing of the excellent material having 
altered with thirty years of hanging, — save the style. 
In the Bible on the bureau of Miss Mary Jane’s bed- 
room was still another keepsake, — a very private and 
personal one, — a lock of sandy hair tied by a blue 
ribbon to a four-leaved clover and a geranium leaf. 
This keepsake antedated the ashes-of-roses gown. The 
geranium leaf was yellow, the clover leaf brittle ; but, 
mark you, not a bit was broken off. The blue ribbon 
was faded and ugly, but this ghostly love-knot was 
more beautiful to Miss Mary Jane Fontaine’s eyes than 
anything that the sun’s light shone upon. 

“ Aunt Mary,” said Diana, following her aunt into 
the dining-room, “ what sort of a man is Dr. Lough- 
borough ?” 

“ Ask your uncle Grat, honey ; they were in the war 
together, same company.” Miss Mary Jane’s nature 
was to avoid a direct answer to any question. 

“ But is he of a good family?” insisted Diana. 

“ Your uncle calls them Bourbons.” Burbons, she 
pronounced it. 

“ I thought they were French people. Is he of a 
French family ?” 

“ Not as I know, honey.” 

“ Then what do you mean ?” persisted Diana. 

“ You’ll have to ask your uncle.” 

In Miss Mary Jane’s mind the woman’s prerogative 


DIANA FONTAINE. 27 

was to be absolutely ignorant of everything not do- 
mestic. 

“ Something about letting things stay as they are, 
and not trying to make them better ; your uncle doesn’t 
like to work with the Burbons ; I’ve heard him say he 
can’t pull with them,” explained Miss Mary Jane, 
pitying her niece’s puzzled look. 

“ Is Dr. Loughborough a fine physician ?” she asked, 
suddenly, after an interval of musing. 

“ He’s called in to the Kapper neighborhood, and to 
the Purcells, way off on Timber Kidge.” 

“ Why did he come here to practise in Pughtown, 
if he is a fine physician?” demanded Diana, a little 
spitefully. 

“ Why, there was no other doctor on this circuit.” 
Miss Mary Jane’s Methodism leaked out in her re- 
ply. “ And Dr. Fawnystawk is too infirm to be the 
navigator he used to be.” Miss Mary Jane’s concep- 
tion of the height of elegance was to indulge in words 
with tails to them. Sh6 volunteered another piece of 
information. “ He is engaged to Lou-i-sa Fawny- 
stawk.” 

“ Lou-i-sa Faw-ny-stawk. Good heavens ! what a 
name !” gasped Diana with difficulty, as she was in the 
very act of swallowing a wedge of flannel-cake satu- 
rated with honey. 

Just then the outer door opened and Grat Fontaine, 
recently emerged from a hand- and face-bath in the 
wooden piggin outside, entered the room and took his 
seat at the table. 


28 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


CHAPTER II. 

What is called in the Alps a Pass, becomes in the 
White Mountains a Notch ; in the Catskills, a Clove, 
and in the Blue Ridge, a Gap. Details of scenery 
may differ, but certain characteristics prevail common 
to the natural feature. Sometimes the stream, seeking 
its outlet through the channel it cuts between mountain 
masses, rushes along in white rage through a stern 
gorge, such as we find upon the Simplon Pass ; some- 
times it breaks through rocky barriers in a multitude 
of jaunty leaps, ending in the saucy beauty which fas- 
cinates the beholder in the Falls of the Cauterskill 
Clove ; sometimes there is only a gentle creek, cooing 
and dimpling in infantine sweetness over white pebbles, 
as in the gaps of the Little North Mountain. But the 
infantile sweetness is deceptive ; for, after a heavy rain- 
fall, these diminutive creeks swell, fret against their 
stony beds and overflow them, bringing serious damage 
in their track. 

In the neighborhood of Teller’s Gap, with its couple 
of charming runs spread like watered ribbons through 
the windings of the hills, stands Pughtown, at the con- 
fluence of four turnpike roads, of which one trends 
towards Winchester, and thence, over Snicker’s Gap, 
into the Piedmont country ; one, over the Ridge into 
Hampshire ; one, down the Valley, and one, north, 
into Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

In the early years of this century the convenience of 
its position brought Billy Fontaine to Pughtown, and 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


29 


Fate kept him there. In those days it was a thriving 
village, with a prospect ; now it is an elaborate mud- 
puddle, damned to hopeless insignificance. Then it 
counted two ordinaries, wherein coaches were quar- 
tered ; for there was no end of travellers bound for 
Baltimore and Philadelphia; or emigrants on their 
way to Ohio and the great West, who journeyed along 
this road, and stayed overnight, bringing news to the 
little post-town from the outside world. Much of the 
iron and salt going West was carried through Pugh- 
town on horseback. Indians from North Carolina 
came hither and pitched their tents for a night’s rest 
upon the clean and wholesome hill-sides ; and pedlers 
were not wanting in this caravansary. There were 
brilliant days, too, when the militia turned out, booted 
and cockaded, making hearts to leap in the bosoms of 
the Fontaine girls. 

Alas ! how changed from all this bustle and variety 
was the Pughtown of Diana Fontaine’s experience. 
The northwest grade struck it a blow from which it 
never recovered ; then the locomotive’s whistle sounded 
its crack of doom. The “ Dragon’s Ordinary” meekly 
closed its doors and acknowledged itself vanquished by 
the modern knight, Sir Steam. The tavern, also losing 
its reputation for beaten biscuit and fried chicken, grew 
sullen, sad, and, at last, reformed, being converted 
from a noisy, roystering public-house into a cobbler’s 
shop. Pughtown was become a lonely spot, from which 
people endeavored to get away, or to which they only 
came to make stump speeches at election times. The 
long, straggling street was become the property of 
hogs, and the mere sound of coach-wheels drew the 
3 * 


30 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


inhabitants to their doors to see what eccentric intruder 
might be visiting them in the depth of their seclusion. 

Billy Fontaine had figured very considerably in 
those old days when Pughtown was looked upon as a 
growing place. He trusted the people and they trusted 
him ; for all that he was such a shrewd man, with an 
eye to making a competency out of the roughest and 
rockiest of soils for the twelve children who sprang up 
about him. He and his wife were a frugal pair ; but 
Billy was handsome and popular and given to visiting 
the tavern, where, with mug of brandy and water in 
hand, he would discuss the doings in the State Senate 
with some friend he was sure to find there, or he would 
salute the ladies with the smiling air of a man who 
realizes that he is the personage of supreme importance 
in the place where he lives. And this was the truth. 
Billy Fontaine had some enemies, to be sure; but he 
was a big man in that neighborhood that begins with 
Hunting Ridge and runs back into the county where 
pines are thickest and farms scarcest. They were not 
so scarce, however, but what there were men enough to 
swear by Billy when he wanted constituents at elec- 
tions ; or women enough to say, with unanimous voice, 
“ Billy Fontaine, he were a man that were a man ; yes, 
indeedy, that he were. He’s got the brains, if any- 
body’s got ’em.” 

Fontaine used to say, on his return from the meet- 
ings of the Legislature, a The Valley, why it is the 
gardene-spot of the whole world ; a land overflowing 
with milk and honey. The vineyards, — look at them ; 
they bear grapes in clusters like unto the grapes of 
Eshcol.” The canny farmer had several ways of talk- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


31 


ing. When he wished to make an impress, as he said, 
on the methodistical community in whose bosom he 
dwelt, he turned on the scriptural oratory, which, bear- 
ing the sacred seal, carried conviction. In the State 
Senate of Richmond he turned on a very different 
oratory, a florid rhetoric in vogue with the men who, 
fifty years back, delighted in Tupper, English parlia- 
mentary debates, and the poetasters of George III.’s 
time. He made allusiorfs to the fair sex, flung off long 
relative clauses rich in Latin quotations, outlandishly 
pronounced, which nobody understood, but which im- 
parted a pungent importance to his remarks. When the 
time came, however, for a dry, shrewd, cutting speech, 
without Latinisms or palaver concerning the fair sex, 
trust me, but Billy Fontaine could make it as well as 
any man who ever used good old Saxon English. Pie 
could tell a man, in the most strenuous words of the 
vernacular, what his duty was, and to “go and be 
damned if he didn’t get along ahead and do it.” He 
belonged to that class of men who, in the spirit of 
Patrick Henry and the Constitution, would rather have 
seen the Union fly into a million pieces than see State 
independence injured by one jot or tittle. People did 
not talk in those days of individualism versus national- 
ism ; yet, practically, Billy was an individualist, an 
enlightened individualism being in his mind the nearest 
approach to true freedom. It was well he did not live 
to see States-Rights a dead letter; his heart would 
have broken, all the same ; but there would have been 
larger throes and longer scorchings. 

Even his high-stepping granddaughter, Diana, ad- 
mitted, in Pughtown’s degenerate days, that “here 


32 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


was a country fit to be called the garden-spot of the 
world, — if — if,” — and she sighed often enough ; for 
a fiery imagination despises the utilitarianism that 
grovels, and youth longs for converse with other 
souls. 

But the land was fair, her eyes declared. The hills 
were like elder sisters to the valleys, caressing them 
with the velvet touch of deep soft grass ; the farm- 
steads were set in the foldings of the ridge-lands like 
shrines ; instead of bare cliffs, there were knolls crowned 
with trees, many of them stately, such as maples, oaks, 
chestnut, hickory, and walnut. It was a country made 
for squirrels, and ground-bunnies, and barefooted boys, 
to judge from the wealth of nuts that deep-bosomed, 
mellow-eyed Autumn hung out upon the trees. One 
found here much of the vegetation and coloring which 
one sees in the plain of Lombardy, and in the richly- 
fruited valleys of the Apennines, the gold-colored haze, 
the purple shadows along the hill-slopes, and bending 
over the whole the most graciously, tenderly blue sky 
that can be imagined. 

When asked, the young lady explained, without 
the least reluctance, that her “if comprehended the 
people. They were common and illiterate ; they had 
no savoir-vivre. Why, they were nothing but Hessians, 
not descendants of English cavaliers, like the Fon- 
taines,” and her dainty nose frequently lifted itself in 
order to sniff in a rarer atmosphere than that inhaled 
by the heavier Dutch nostrils around her. To speak 
truly, the Fontaines had been strongly tinctured by 
the Hessian element which runs, like a streak of lean 
in fat bacon, from Pennsylvania through Page, Augusta, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


33 


Shenandoah, and Frederick. Neighbors to the Fon- 
taines were Spanglers, Winkers, Hefflebowers, Stottle- 
myers, Swartzes, Funkliausers, Spitzers, Lionbergers, 
and a sprinkling of Dunkards. 

These Hessians have a history. Burgoyne said 
wittily, at the close of the Revolutionary War, that 
he could force his way through woods, but not through 
— Gates. In his surrender that followed, a number of 
Hessians were delivered over to General Gates, who 
placed them in barracks somewhere on the Pughtown 
pike. While awaiting parole, General Morgan em- 
ployed them to build a country-house in Clarke County, 
called Saratoga, in honor of the battle gained by the 
Americans, and in which the Hessians had been forced 
to lay down their arms. When the time came for an 
exchange of prisoners, the Hessians refused to leave 
the Valley, which they now adopted as their mother- 
land. 

Foreigners and mercenaries in the pay of the British 
government at first, they became afterwards children 
of the soil which they had made a vain effort to con- 
quer. To this day they are a simple, frugal people, with 
but little of the native Virginian about them. The 
women spin, the men farm ; and they live shut away 
by mountains, in the midst of a thrift which might 
benefit any neighborhood, were it not for the nar- 
row-minded sordidness and ignorance characterizing 
them. 

Were they or were they not picturesque ? Diana could 
not decide. They were primitive, to be sure, and life 
with them was as much of a pastoral as with Paul 
and Virginia in the Isle of France. “ Early candle- 


34 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


lighting” was announced from the pulpit as the hour 
for prayer-meetings. Men designated their wives and 
daughters with crude sarcasm as “ the ’omen- folks or 
doman-folks.” The beauty of the village was described 
as “a likely-faceted young ’oman, neat-limbed as the 
Greenbrier heifer.” This was a community living in 
almost unbroken seclusion, emerging from the home- 
valley only for court-days and shows. They had never 
seen a real, live Catholic. Episcopalian was a word 
interchangeable with Bourbon, applicable to a mon- 
strosity of worldliness ; a creature who put on airs ; 
one who had rabid notions about family , and who 
wished to gobble up the rights of humanity. John 
Knox did not eye the sovereign lady of the house of 
Stuart with more distrust than these Pughtowners did 
Diana Fontaine, — a city girl, an Episcopalian, a young 
lady who rode or walked into the village for the mail 
with a simple muslin, not unlike theirs, but worn — 
how differently. There are things too subtle to be de- 
scribed by words : you can only feel them. 

The Pughtown maidens, dully conscious of inferiority 
when they saw the muslin-robed damsel pass the post- 
office, would cry, “ Is that all New York City can 
do ? Pughtown can do as good as that. Why, Miss 
Fontaine, she can’t hold a candle to Lou-i-sy Fawny- 
stawk.” 

But the young men were less censorious; the 
damsel, in her airy lawn gown, without gloves, and 
with a broad-brimmed hat shading a piquant nose and 
saucy chin, gave a little electric shock to their slow 
wdts when she floated past. “ By Joseph !” they would 
say, with an admiring glance ; “ she’s as peart an’ 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


35 


sassy-looking as a little F. F. V.” And though they 
had but little reverence for the F. F. V. in the abstract, 
they were convertible to this particular specimen of 
elegant girlhood, whom, however, they were too bash- 
ful to approach. 

One sultry afternoon, Miss Fontaine, appearing on 
the edge of the village, was ogled by its female in- 
habitants through closed shutters. Captain McElroy, 
catching glimmers of her muslin skirt from betwixt 
the maple-trees shading the rustic academy upon the 
hill, emerged from a yawn, dismissed the school-chil- 
dren, stretched his legs, and measured the declivity 
with unusual briskness. Some one else was ahead of 
him, however, for Algy Swartz, a dark-visaged young 
man, with an uneasy stiffness about arms and knees, 
stood in the post-office porch, holding the Fontaine 
mail in his hand, and waiting to hand it over to the 
charming carrier, with as much eagerness as if his life 
depended upon the contents of those red-wafered letters. 

“ Here’s your mail, miss,” said Algy Swartz, with 
deferential shyness, feeling that his arms and legs were 
no longer of the slightest use to him, when Miss Fon- 
taine, halting in front of the one-storied building, 
tilted her shade-hat and allowed a play of feature to 
dazzle him completely. He felt unequal to the occa- 
sion, as if he had been singed and blackened by that 
bright flame which still played on, gaining beauty and 
brilliancy by everything it fed on. 

Algy was a slow and silent fellow, “who did not 
take much stock in gals,” as his kinspeople said ; but 
“ who kept up a devil of a-thinkink” He was accus- 
tomed to the clumsy coquetry and bashful amorous- 


36 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ness of the Pughtown maidens, so he found somethings 
unexpected and exciting in Miss Fontaine’s playing 
features and sparkling, “ Thanks, Mr. Swartz : how 
kind !” If she had given him a decanter of cham- 
pagne, he could not have turned giddier than when she 
pronounced those words, “ Thanks, Mr. Swartz. You 
have given me just what I want most.” Swartz could 
have died on the spot; his tongue became absolutely 
useless. Captain McElroy coming up the next minute, 
with his air of handsome indolence, was at once a 
refuge and an odious interruption. 

This poetic-looking pedagogue was primed for con- 
quest. “ Might he accompany Miss Fontaine home, 
and hold the parasol while she read her letters ?” “ Oh, 
yes ; but the letters would keep,” and, playing with 
those imposingly-sealed envelopes, the crisp muslin 
dress whirled round about and floated back in the 
direction whence it had come, a striped parasol held 
over its wearer’s head by Captain McElroy. 

“Well, I think in my heart, if that brazen piece 
hasn’t caught a beau a’ready,” was whispered through 
closed blinds. “ Great Scott ! an’ if she hasn’t been 
an’ tacked the cap’n on to her pettycoatie tails !” 

This exclamation was all but smothered in the throat 
of Miss Vanessa Spangler, a young lady whose father 
owned the Still-house, and who herself laid claims to 
the fascinating captain. 

“ I’ll up and ride over to Fontaine’s myself inside 
the hour, and ketch them two flirtacious ones ; see if I 
don’t.” 

Miss Vanessa was as good as her word. In a half- 
hour she had made an out-and-out toilette, to judge 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


37 


from her rattling skirts as she appeared in the back- 
room of the house, where the family sat during the 
warm hours of the day, and asked whether she could 
have the horse for the rest of the afternoon. Of course, 
no Pughtown lady ever walked when she could ride, 
it not being the usage of the place ; and there are to 
be found no people on the face of the earth more punc- 
tilious in such matters of etiquette as their code has 
laid down. The question of the horse, however, started 
a topic too interesting to be dropped at once. 

Mrs. Spangler, who understood her daughter’s posi- 
tion, had to urge her old man, who dozed, half of him 
in the house, half out, — 

“ Mr. Spangler, can’t you make a way for Vanessy 
to go up to Fontaineses this evenin’ ?” 

“ Make a way for her to go where ?” During this 
question the old gentleman cracked each knuckle of 
his two hands. 

“ Up to Fontaineses.” 

Mrs. Spangler was ironing energetically, and her 
energy always had a paralyzing effect upon her hus- 
band. 

“ Can’t spare the horse,” was the lukewarm re- 
joinder. 

It did not occur to him, any more than to his wife, 
that Vanessa could walk the mile which separated 
them from the Fontaine’s, a distance which Diana 
herself walked cheerfully twice a day, oftentimes ; but 
which the ladies of Pughtown hated her for doing. It 
was an open violation of their chiefest canon of good 
breeding. 

“ Where’s Billy Loy?” 


4 


38 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Mrs. Spangler knew that the horse answering to this 
name was idle to-day on account of having cast a shoe, 
and that he was waiting in the stall for Mick, her 
eldest son, to come in from the field and ride the cob 
over to the shop. 

“ He’s lame,” was the reply. 

“ Go ahead, pappy. ’Taint goin’ to hurt Billy Loy 
to carry me up to Fontaineses. Mick can ride him to 
the shop when I get back. I’ll be home by candle- 
lighting, ’deed and ’deed I will.” 

“Will you?” 

Spangler made a lazy movement in order to look at 
his daughter, perhaps to discover just how much in 
earnest she was about the horse. His philosophy ran 
this way, “Work like a dawg, if you’ve got to; but 
don’t do a lick without you have to.” He perceived 
at a glance that his daughter’s mind was made up. 
She wore a muslin, the material best suited to the ardor 
of the June afternoon. It was a cheap one, gay with 
hollyhocks, and made by the^oung lady’s own fingers. 
Bven Algy Swartz might have detected that its waist 
was short and its plaits clumsy. A narrow pink rib- 
bon was tied bridle-wise about her throat, her black 
hair was “roached up” high on the top of her head, a 
spick-and-spang new slat bonnet of striped calico 
was in one hand, the other held up the stained riding- 
skirt buttoned around her waist over the lawn dress. 
Yes, she was in visiting trim ; there were no two ways 
about that; so Mike Spangler arose from his chair 
slowly. He knew that he would do this from the 
first ; but he wanted to be as long about it as possible. 
He was sorry that the argument was come to a close. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


39 


He would have liked to talk five minutes longer, any 
way. Pie hobbled out towards the shed slowly ; but 
it was another good half-hour before Miss Vanessa had 
the pleasure of sitting in the saddle upon Billy Loy’s 
back. Billy Loy was deliberate, like his master, and 
consequently in no haste to start. Miss Spangler rode 
off at last, however, looking a very composite person, 
her lower half being habited in a riding-skirt, Amazon 
fashion ; her upper half in muslin, ribbons, and pink 
and white calico, like a girl at a fair. Her hands, 
short and pudgy, were partly gloved in what are here 
called leathern half-handers. Off they went at last, 
and the young lady’s bosom was now divided by two 
feelings, — exultation at having gained her point, and 
jealousy at the thought of the interview she was giving 
herself so much trouble to interrupt. 

While Miss Vanessa Spangler’s plans were maturing, 
the object of them, Captain McElroy, was enjoying his 
brief recess in the society of a very attractive young 
lady ; for Diana, being at that age when women rejoice 
in new acquaintances, expecting to find a disguised 
prince in every man, was displaying her social accom- 
plishments with the same carelessness that she would 
have done charms on a gold watch-chain. She scorned 
the heat ; then complained of it ; declared she could 
walk all day without feeling tired ; the next moment 
flung herself on a knoll to which she climbed on the 
hill-side with the asseveration that she was too ex- 
hausted to move another step. In short, she exhibited 
herself in a variety of the most contradictory moods, 
determining that if one did not captivate, the next 
should. To herself she said, by way of apology, “ I 


40 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


have been getting glimpses of this man’s profile for a 
quarter of a mile. I shall go wild, if I cannot get a 
good peep at his full face.” With this determination, 
she sat down, as we have said, exhausted, on the first 
convenient resting-place, and took a long look at her 
companion, who slipped down upon the grass in front 
of her, his back against a tree. 

She had met him several times before, though never 
until now in broad daylight. She had called him, 
mentally, an ideal troubadour ; not of the dark type, 
for Captain McElroy was as fair as a girl, with a 
slimmer hand than her own. But, yes, here, in the 
broad daylight of a July day, he was beautiful, dis- 
appointingly, distressingly beautiful for a man. He 
seemed a person born to figure in an adventure, a masque, 
a duel, a love-affair, but not in life’s serious situations. 
He was rash and reckless rather than grave ; extrav- 
agant rather than generous; dramatic rather than 
sincere ; a provincial Marshal Saxe, whose defects had 
a certain baleful beauty. He had the Turk’s dogma 
of fatalism as well as the Mahometan sentiment con- 
cerning woman, who to him was a slave. He quoted 
descriptive and sentimental poetry, most deliciously 
the war-lyrics of the day, and he abused his own 
destiny. He had the gift, always rare, of bringing 
team to the eyes of the listener. He appealed to 
Diana’s aesthetic sense, until, caught by glamour, she 
felt him to be an extraordinary man ; for, as yet, the 
moral perceptions had but faintly stirred within her 
bosom; taste, not conscience, was her guide. Sitting 
with his back against a drooping locust-tree, looking 
straight at her with his full, heavy-lidded, blue eyes, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


41 


he appeared to her as fitted for a studio, a villa, a 
Parisian atelier, a New York apartment, but strangely 
out of place in Pughtown, teaching bare-footed Stotts 
and tow-headed, pig-headed Funks. McElroy’s soft 
complainings against his evil star, as he forked his 
long, light-brown beard with taper fingers, harmonized 
with the girl’s own mood. He thought, in tuneful 
monody, that he had never been appreciated. Diana 
agreed with him. He hugged misfortune ; called Des- 
tiny a stepmother ; Heredity, a baleful demon ; cast the 
failures of his life back upon his ancestors, upwards, 
to the stars ; anywhere but upon himself. 

Diana sighed. McElroy flung upon her in return a 
glance of gratitude so eloquent that it set her heart 
to thumping against her breast, as it cried, Be his 
confidante, his friend, the woman’s mission. I will, 
I will, whispered breast, not reason, back to the heart. 
McElroy thought of woman as of a slave; but that 
she should be an intelligent one, increased the fascina- 
tion. 

“ I wonder you stay in such a place as Pughtown, 
Captain McElroy. Why don’t you go elsewhere, where 
you would find a broader field, one better suited to 
you?” 

Diana was arranging, with infinite pains, tufts of 
timothy in her shade-hat, dividing her attention be- 
tween McElroy’s Greek nose, Byron collar, ragged 
regimentals, and this poetic millinery. 

“ Ah, Miss Fontaine, you are from the North. You 
can hardly realize how broken down in fortunes we 
poor Southern men were after the war ; thousands of 
young girls, like you, wept bitterly on the day that 
4 * 


42 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Lee surrendered ; thousands of men rode away from 
the battle-field that had been a home to them for years ; 
from the army, that had been father, brothers, religion, 
business, cause, all in one, to find their homes broken 
up and desolate, their families scattered : I, like others, 
found myself without a home, without a purpose, with- 
out means to get my daily bread. I came to Pughtown 
with my friend and comrade, Grat Fontaine, and here 
I am.” A smile of sweetest melancholy fluttered the 
pale-brown mustaches of McElroy. 

“ Yes ; but here you should not stay,” her eyelashes 
twinkled up in questioning eagerness. His calmness 
of face did not waver. 

“ Miss Fontaine,” he began, compressing the warmth 
with which he would have addressed an audience into 
the tepid sweetness deemed suitable for one listener, 
“ before the wai*we were dreamers, here at the South ; 
life meant being, not doing; this is no longer the 
land where we were dreaming,” — he paused, to impart 
to this quotation a rolling elocution which had gained 
him the reputation of the “grandest reader in the 
"Valley,” — “this is a new land, in which we are being 
rudely wakened ; before the waking comes the night- 
mare. Some of us are now having the nightmare.” 

There was something touching to Diana’s fresh 
young heart in this sorrow that would not be c6m- 
forted. A man with blasted fortunes, even if he re- 
fused to mend them, was, to say the least, wonderfully 
interesting. 

“ A nightmare ? Horrible ! But some one must wake 
you, Captain McElroy ; let me wake you !” She felt 
reserves of energy seething up within her as she spoke. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


43 

She wished she could do something to encourage a 
ruined man. 

Captain McElroy shook his head with dreary grace. 
After a few minutes of silence, he quoted the lines, 
beginning, — 

“ Furl that banner, for ’tis weary, 

And its folds are drooping, dreary.” 

His voice died away in a broken murmur. Diana 
feared to look up, lest she might surprise tears oil a 
man’s cheek : she turned away her head. The July 
afternoon playing about them on gold butterfly-wings 
was so full of gladness that she could not feel as 
sorrowful as she felt she should have done; but 
McElroy, who enjoyed her sympathy too much to dis- 
pense with it yet, added, — 

“ To-day reminds me of July first, ’63; the sun 
shone just as it does now over miles upon miles of 
yellow wheat, and it looked down upon a spectacle 
which, to those human eyes beholding it, can never, 
never be forgotten. That day began the downfall of the 
Confederacy. It was Gettysburg, not Appomattox, 
Miss Fontaine, which sealed our doom. I shall never 
forget those three brigades that rushed forward so gal- 
lantly, then staggered back, a bleeding remnant; three- 
fourths of the men, fourteen out of fifteen field-officers, 
lay down, forever, upon that field, under just so jubilant 
a sun as this.” The sunbeams shone upon McElroy 
through the locust-branches, tingeing his long, light 
hair with amber warmth and touching his too pallid 
countenance into a moment’s radiance ; there was real 
feeling in the voice that continued : “ On that day 


44 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Garnett was killed ; Armistead shot, spurring his horse 
over the breastworks ; Kemper, wounded by a canister . 
bursting over him. Pickett’s handful, charging the 
whole Federal army, met death at every step. They 
fought, bayonet to bayonet, bravely, hopelessly, and 
they died gloriously. Ah, Miss Fontaine, I was at 
Gettysburg. What is there in life after such an ex- 
perience ?” 

“ What, indeed ?” Diana dared not speak, lest her 
own voice should shock her by its flatness. Her im- 
agination was ready to receive impressions ; she felt 
the spell of McElroy, a soldier, yet capable of action 
only under severe stress, and realizing himself that his 
life had been lived. She felt the splendidly Gallic 
quality of the Southern enthusiasm whose overflow 
turned into emotion, tumult, and reckless gayety those 
years immediately following the Confederacy. She be- 
gan to think that even Pugh town could be interesting. 

“ What a life for the women ! what a bewildering, - 
helpless, yet glorious life !” 

She chewed several grass-beards in her excitement, 
and mused over those possibilities for intense experi- 
ence which the Confederacy had presented. 

“Yes; they were one day in Northern, the next 
in Southern, lines ; danger on every side ; but they were 
fit to mate with our men, as far as heroism goes.” 

Then Captain McElroy, as if stirred by some super- 
latively sweet memory, began to hum that tune which 
no Confederate will ever forget, linked, as it is, with 
the sweethearting of those days of the dear old Con- 
federacy. The humming broke into words. Diana 
listened and laughed as she caught them ; 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


45 


“ A hundred months have passed, Lorina, 

Since last I held thy hand in mine, 

And felt its pulse heat fast, Lorina, 

Though mine beat faster far than thine.” 

Captain McElroy’s way of singing implied a whole 
volume of hidden histories, the consciousness of which 
stained his cheeks with heightened color. Fluting his 
lips, he changed the song to a whistled strain carrying 
the tune. Diana watched him eagerly. 

“ Those were the days for love-making. A man car- 
ried his heart on his lips ; he did not know where the 
next day would find him : it was, speak then or never ; 
so he spoke. 

This little clause, breathed never so softly, was in- 
terrupted by the vision of a figure on horseback, a 
hundred paces from the secluded knoll where the two 
were sitting, and Vanessa Spangler rode by on Billy 
Loy, her alpaca skirt taking the breeze, balloon fashion. 

When the horseback-vision had passed, McElroy 
said, regretfully, “ Alas ! love was sometimes too free 
a gift in those happy-go-lucky days, and we often 
said that which we would have wished unsaid, after- 
ward.” 

A silence followed, during which McElroy was sup- 
posed to be contemplating the vision of some one of 
these lost loves he had been hinting at ; in reality, he 
was observing the girl from under his drowsy eyelids. 
He had the morbid desire to be compassionated and 
esteemed a martyr. His sigh matured into a groan, 
and he pursued, in a voice whose modulations were 
very potent with Diana, “ Love is the land where we 
were dreaming ; the cause is lost, the land conquered, 


46 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the love dead.” Day stood on the edge of evening. 
McElroy was chanting an ode to its decline, the apo- 
theosis of defeat. He suggested ruin, but what a 
graceful ruin, drooping into a poetic decay, with the 
dignified scorn of life of the pessimist; but sorrow 
appeals to youth more quickly than joy ; it is only 
when we have waked up to the purity and vigor of 
the spirit, and have subdued the body, that we appre- 
ciate the full meaning of joy and the serene gayety of 
the soul. As they followed the road- winding home, 
Diana put together a little romance in which the ill- 
fated maiden whom McElroy had loved, and to whom 
he had so vaguely alluded, appeared in a variety of 
forms. The very vagueness of the romance insinuated 
itself in her imagination and fascinated her. At the 
stile, McElroy took her hand in his loose, warm grasp 
and assisted her to mount it. He did not even lift his 
eyes, but hummed on with tender, tuneful nonchalance, 
as if absorbed with the memory of some sweet dream, — 

“ A hundred months have passed, Lorina, 

Since last I held thy hand in mine, 

And felt its pulse beat fast, Lorina, 

Though mine beat faster far than thine.” 

While the two dreamers, one with quickly beating 
pulses, were following the roadway, Miss Mary Jane 
Fontaine was conducting a not very sprightly conver- 
sation with Miss Vanessa Spangler in the sitting-room, 
at home. 

“ How’s your maw, Vanessy?” she asked. 

The round button she called her back-twist pressed 
against the white crocheted tidy of the wooden rocking- 
chair. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


47 


“ Right smart,” was the answer from Miss Spangler, 
who sat bolt upright, as near as she could get to the 
wall. 

“ And your paw ?” ran the catechism. 

“ Right smart ; pappy’s peart, these days.” 

“ Done your drying, V’nessy ?” 

“ Mos’,” was the laconic reply, with a discontented 
quaver. 

“ It’s the best sort o’ dryin’ weather ; the sun’s been 
good and hot.” To this fact Miss Spangler opposed 
no comment, and Miss Fontaine, conscious of her 
duties as hostess, could not allow the conversation to 
flag. So she continued to question. 

“ Think you’ll get to go to the Round Hill bush- 
meeting, Y’nessy ?” 

“ If I can make a way, Miss Mary Jane ; we are 
going to start the pies and things nex’ week. Yes, I 
reckon.” , 

Miss Spangler looked up, and her eyes rested upon 
Roy McElroy standing in the doorway behind Diana, 
who, entering with easy grace, saluted the stranger, 
and then threw herself into a chair with charming in- 
dolence, quite unconscious of the pained heart that 
raged within Miss Spangler’s low-drooping bosom. 

“ If I’d set down on a chair that careless, I’d a been 
on the floor by this time,” thought Miss Spangler, 
looking wrathfully at the young lady, then turning her 
prominent garish-blue eyes full of reproach upon the 
handsome, equally careless-looking Roy. Jealousy 
almost gurgled in Miss Spangler’s throat. “ There 
she sets, and she couldn’t put on more airs if she had 
kicked a man,” ran those jealous thoughts. Diana, 


48 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


g&nee by the stiffness of the little group, surveyed her 
boots, powdered with wayside dust. The rough 
phrase, u kicked a man,” translated into the vernacular 
and reading this way, “ She’s a proud creature, and 
might reject any suitor,” would not have disturbed the 
younger Miss Fontaine, to whom hearts, as yet, were 
nine-pins, to be set up, merely to be knocked down 
again. 

“ I came up here to get shut of her, and shut of her 
I will get,” said Miss Spangler, inly, rising now with 
prompt decision, and the words, — 

“ I come over, Miss Mary Jane, to invite you and 
Miss Fontaine to spend Sa-ad-dy at Cousin Sarah Jane 
Jackson’s. It’s her birthday, and she wants we all to 
eat the first mess of ros’bries with her.” 

An invitation, of course, can be met but in one 
way ; so Miss Mary Jane and Diana hastened to ex- 
press appreciative thanks, when a grotesquely long 
shadow against the open door preluded the entrance 
of Loughborough; his long stride and swinging gait 
reminded you of a jumping-jack, but the keen ray 
from his deep gray eyes singled out each person, whom 
he straightway included in a pleasant, open smile. 

“ Good-evening, doctor,” cried Miss Mary Jane. 
“ Come in and set down again, Vanessy ; pull off your 
things, do ; supper’s nigh about ready now.” * 

“ No, thank you, Miss Mary Jane ; can’t stay this 
evening ; ’deed and ’deed I can’t ; the horse has got to 
go to the shop ’fore dark.” She hesitated a moment, 
smoothing out furrows in her half-handers, then said, 
softly and shyly, as if she could no longer repress 
herself, — 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


49 


“ Cap’n, you haven’t any way to get back to Pugh- 
town ; don’t you want to go back now. I’ll ride behind. 
Billy Loy carries double, you know ?” 

Alas ! love is the altruistic passion. Vanessa 
Spangler would rather have walked every inch of the 
way herself, than to have thought of McElroy’s hand- 
some legs measuring the lonely dusty road. McElroy 
hesitated; now that Loughborough was come, he no 
longer cared to tarry, and he had been already planning 
the most becoming and comfortable means of escape. 

“ If the means of travelling is all that you want, 
here, take my mare and ride home with her,” said 
Loughborough, stepping out to the gate and taking his 
horse by the bridle-rein.” She’s had a good hard day’s 
work, and will be glad of crib and trough. I am going 
to walk, anyway, an hour or so later, when the moon 
is up.” 

“Sure enough?” asked McElroy, still hesitating. 

“ Sure as you’re born, Roy. Go ahead, and don’t 
keep a lady waiting.” 

Miss Vanessa was already in her saddle, smiling 
and looking almost pretty, her slat-bonnet falling back 
from her face and throwing a pink and white glow 
upon her browned cheek. She would not have minded 
riding double ; she would have preferred it, indeed ; but 
she was rejoiced to gain her point, even though she 
must lose this tempting opportunity of sitting on Billy 
Loy, behind the captain, with her arms around his 
waist. “Good-evening, then, ladies.” The captain 
vaulted in Loughborough’s saddle, waved without hat 
a military salute, which made him appear handsomer 
than ever, and the equestrians rode off down the lane, 
c d 5 


50 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


and were soon lost to view behind the willows. “ He 
is a fine rider,” cried Diana, shading her eyes to catch 
the last view of them. Loughborough remained silent. 
“ He has such a sweet tenor voice, too.” She thought 
of Lorina, and hummed a line, “ A hundred years have 
passed, Lorina.” Loughborough did not speak. “ He is 
the most wonderful quoter of poetry !” Still Lough- 
borough was silent. Diana thought he frowned slightly. 
“ He is certainly a gallant soldier ; you told me that, 
didn’t you?” she added, with reproach. She longed 
for response. 

“ He was a gallant soldier,” rejoined Loughborough ; 
then a moment later, with a note of irony, “ So you 
have at last found something to admire in Pughtown, 
Miss Fontaine?” 


CHAPTER III. 

The plantation life which existed in the South 
before the war was the nearest approach to feudalism 
which modern history will ever see ; but there is, per- 
haps, no epoch in Southern social life more deeply 
romantic than the first years after the Avar. Recon- 
struction was not yet achieved, and the aroma of 
chivalry still clung to the Southland ; the negroes had 
not outlived the loyalty and reverence bred in vassal- 
ship. A whole people were swept by a passionate 
esprit de corps Avhich defied misfortune. Honor was a 
man’s Avealth ; poverty, his glory. His Aveapons were 
his own fight arm and the horse upon which he rode 
home from the war. He married the girl Avho with 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


51 


him adored the Confederacy and worshipped Lee as 
her patron saint. Both of them knew that love was 
to be their only portion ; for there was no marrying 
for money in those days; it was the heart that was 
measured, not the purse. 

What an odd blending of war and peace when the 
Confederate soldiers, after four years of warfare, turned 
farmers. They still wore cavalry-boots, rode on cav- 
alry-saddles, carried their families to church in am- 
bulances, turned their canteens to use in the dairy, 
called their enemies “ scalawags,” talked of making 
“the carpet-baggers skedaddle,” and found time to 
touch their guitars on summer nights, to the chords 
of a war-song or love-ditty. The air had a smack in 
it of brilliant military memories ; bushwhackers and 
guerillas, like the moss-troopers in Teviotdale, eight 
hundred years back, gave a fascinating flavor of re- 
bellion to the sudden and oppressive peace which had 
settled down upon the country. It was a land without 
money ; a people without a government, if we except 
that which was now become tradition. The Union 
was regarded as a disagreeable stepmother, and national 
holidays were quietly ignored. Every one agreed to 
laugh together over the humorous incidents which the 
new life presented. There was a Bohemian element in 
the air, and no one quite knew what he was going to 
do next. After discontinuing the exciting life of the 
battle-field, what should be the sequel? Some men 
returned to the occupations which had claimed them 
before the war ; to this class belonged Launce Lough- 
borough. 

Some men, paralyzed by the huge effort they had 


52 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


been making for four years, sat down to dream ; to 
this class belonged Roy McElroy. Some men turned 
their swords into ploughshares and their eyes towards 
the political arena; to this last class belonged Grat 
Fontaine. 

Grat was Squire Billy’s youngest child, and now the 
only surviving one of six as likely lads as ever kicked 
up dust on the Pughtown pike. The war had made 
havoc in the Fontaine family : Ned, the eldest, Diana’s 
father, had died of privation in the Point Lookout 
prison ; two fell at Gettysburg ; one in the tangles of 
the Wilderness, and one other beside Grattan, Kos- 
ciusko, survived the war, and married, just before its 
close, Law-ra, a sister of Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk. 

Law-ra’s wedding was an odd blending of pleasure 
and plunder, occurring, as it did, when Lee’s commis- 
sariat was nearly exhausted. This young woman’s 
wedding-handkerchiefs and underclothing were con- 
trived out of the coarse sheeting which old Mrs. 
Fahnestalk (Fawnystawk) had woven with her own 
hands and left behind her in the wardrobes of the 
homestead. The daughters had, in various times of 
emergency, despoiled themselves, bit by bit, of their 
under-garments, for conversion into bandages in hos- 
pital-service. They were excellent, useful young 
women, never stopping to consider, when a wounded 
soldier was at hand, how much they might miss their 
under skirts, aprons, or gowns, so long as these things 
could be turned into compresses for gaping wounds. 
Law-ra’s bridal present was the contents of an entire 
shop which Moseby and his men had raided the night 
previous to the wedding. The booty was placed at the 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


53 


bride’s disposal by the groom-elect, a daring guerilla ; 
and the two were married on horseback, as they were 
in the enemy’s lines, and had to be ready to flee if a 
signal should be given. The bride, at any other time, 
might have been embarrassed by boxes of stockings, 
bolts of edging, yards upon yards of alpaca braid, 
packages of pink and blue mosquito-netting, jars of 
striped mint candy ; but, now, these treasures were a 
godsend, and were shared with friends and neighbors, 
according to the generous fashion of the times. After 
the war, Law-ra and Kosciusko went West, where they 
died, within a few weeks of each other, from the effects 
of mountain fever. So out of a large family only two 
were left, — Miss Mary Jane and Grattan, the oldest and 
the youngest. 

Billy had almost Oriental ideas concerning w T omen. 
His daughters received but scant education, being 
looked upon as the menial portion of the household ; 
but the boys had been allowed freedom, and several of 
them college training, — Diana’s father being one of 
these. The old gentleman had been proud of his sons, 
a handsome lot of fellows, — a flesh-and-blood library, 
he said, showing his own intellectual tastes. 

“ I put every uncommon man, such as I set store on, 
into my family group, — English, American, Polish • 
it’s all the same. I like to see them scattered around 
my hearth-place.” 

Edward Everett, William De Kalb, James Bu- 
chanan, George Washington, Kosciusko, and Henry 
Grattan, therefore, grew up under their father’s wing 
into strong-limbed fellows, with a taste for politics and 
a huge scorn of what was called, later, the Bourbon. 

5 * 


54 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


At the same time, they were not without a sly con- 
tempt of what Billy called, with a grin, the Cones- 
toga, — that is, the common country people. 

He looked upon his girls as ciphers, useful in com- 
bination with other figures, but of no consequence by 
themselves. They were not deemed worthy even of 
illustrious names, such as their brothers had fallen heir 
to. Susan married, and died, as the tombstone over- 
looking Pughtown village records ; ’Lizy Alice had 
also been snatched from life’s tedium, leaving Miss 
Mary Jane to grind alone at the family’s mill. 

This lady’s failure to marry had been a mortification 
to Squire Fontaine, whose opinion was that when a 
woman has no vocation for matrimony, she is no longer 
a woman, but a slave. In his eyes, women must 
either be slaves or queens, and certain it is that Mary 
Jane was no queen. There had been a time — the tide 
of life standing at its highest in her veins — when she 
had rebelled ; but only once, for she had been very 
quickly put down, and her back soon became fitted to 
her burden. She loved Grattan secretly; but he 
frankly admitted that she bored him, that her tameness 
roused the devil in him; so she endured his dislike 
meekly, mended his socks, prepared the dishes he liked, 
watched his comings and goings with furtive solicitude, 
and left him undisturbed. 

This treatment of her Aunt Mary angered Diana ; 
but what angered her still more was that she saw her- 
self placed in the same category. A week at the 
Valley Farm, and not one word of welcome addressed 
to her yet by Grattan. 

“ I will make that boorish man speak to me this 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


55 


morning at breakfast,” she said to herself, on the 
morning of the raspberry feast, as she dressed in her 
aunt’s queer bedroom. 

It was five o’clock. Miss Mary Jane breakfasted 
the whole year round at five, dined at eleven, and 
supped in the afternoon at five. She had always been 
flying ahead of time, though why, no man knew ; for 
she had gained nothing from this mad race with the 
hours, not even a husband. There was a foretaste of 
heat in the dainty breeze that rattled the brilliantly 
blue-paper shades of the windows. Diana hated these 
shades because the blue rubbed off, and because, being 
opaque, she could not lie in bed and see the sky through 
them ; besides which, they were tied with pink tape, 
and this made discord to her eye. 

“ Yes, I will compel that boorish man to speak to 
me. He shall not treat me as he does Aunt Mary. I 
am a Fontaine as well as he.” 

Diana sprang from her couch and bounded across 
the bare, blue-painted floor, in the determination to 
shake off the sluggishness bred of feathers, upon which 
she had been lying all night. The Fontaines had all 
been “ raised to feather-beds.” There was a flaw in the 
laying of the planks of the floor ; they sank slightly — 
an inclined plane — as you approached the bureau. In 
crossing the room, you could not walk straight. It 
seemed as if the floor waved and the walls heaved ; it 
would have made you sea-sick, that is, if you had hap- 
pened to be as sensitive as was Diana. It was this 
sensibility which enraged her uncle, as a bit of red rag 
would enrage a bull. It was the elaborate carelessness, 
the exaggerated simplicity savoring of the Bourbon, 


56 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


which went against the grain in Grattan ; for he found 
her a blending pf nature and art ; and a part of his 
creed was to abominate high-faluting notions. 

“ Damn, the Bourbons !” was just now his war 
cry. 

After diamonding her neck with delicious drops of 
spring-water, and emerging from the elixir throbbing 
with life and radiantly fresh as her namesake, the 
goddess of the bath, Diana finished her task of dress- 
ing quickly, and descended to the breakfast-room, in- 
tent upon conversation that should include her uncle. 
To her good-morning smile, he gave an oblique glance 
of disapprobation out of a pair of chestnut-brown eyes, 
and pursued his meal, studiously taciturn. 

“ What a delicious day for our ride !” she ventured, 
casting a sidewise glance at her uncle, and wondering 
if he could be tempted into a courteous salutation. 

“ Delicious ! The ’mirations over nature of these 
town-bred girls,” thought Grat, with his mouth full of 
corn-bread, his dogged and democratic nostrils teased 
by the scent of the sweetbrier rose in the brown braids. 
He would not have minded its delicate perfume from 
the trellis, its home, but the pretty note of a woman’s 
vanity offended him on principle. He had a vague 
consciousness that most young women take the auto- 
biographic view of life ; that they look at nature sub- 
jectively, not objectively, as they should ; that they 
cannot see a height without fancying how they would 
look upon it, or a stream of water, without reproducing 
their sensations in it. He considered, therefore, their 
rhapsodies upon nature as sincere, only so far as it 
included themselves; and sincerity was the quality 


DIANA FONTAINE . 57 

which turned Grat to a fanatic. Politically, he might 
be an individualist, but not artistically. 

“ How soon shall we start, Aunt Mary ?” 

A visit in this country meant going early and return- 
ing late, so as to include holiday from preparing meals 
at home. 

“ As soon as your Uncle Grat can get the horses up, 
honey. They’re in the field, ain’t they ?” 

This interrogative, addressed to her brother, drew 
no response from Grat Fontaine. There he sat, close 
to his elegant niece, in his shirt-sleeves, his ducking- 
pants stuffed into top-boots, as if he were making a 
meal with clod-hoppers. 

His elegant niece eyed him resentfully. Why would 
he be so rude? yet he was good-looking, too, in spite 
of it all. He was the kind of man whom fast eating, 
heavy drinking, and sluggish digestion will one day 
turn coarse ; but, as yet, he showed that fine muscularity 
which four years of privation in the way of eating and 
cavalry service had developed in him. He was the 
ideal Mars, drawing his breath passionately through 
his well-cut nostrils ; his dark russet beard and bronzed 
cheek showing the red lights of a wrathful tempera- 
ment ; his robust muscles abandoned, at this moment, 
to the absorbing task of eating. J ust so might Mars 
have breakfasted after one of the conflicts of the Trojan 
siege. His movements betokened violence ; he despised 
what he called airs, affectations, and fine-ladyisms ; and 
of these small vices he considered his niece, Diana, the 
living representative. He likewise disdained the femi- 
nine virtues of meekness, patience, and endurance, and 
so he despised his sister Mary Jane, whom he con- 


58 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


sidered the embodiment of these qualities. Naturally 
impatient, he could sympathize with those who rebelled, 
not with those who submitted. Fiercely democratic, 
he stood by the class who demand their rights ; and he 
looked askance at the class which considers itself the 
exponent of culture, — culture being a word which gave 
him cold shivers, another name for affectation and hy- 
pocrisy, and a synonyme for oppression. 

Born of good blood, he had received the education 
of a peasant; and, like all men to whom Fortune has 
shown herself unequal, he felt insecure. He was sus- 
picious of his betters and very fractious towards his 
inferiors. He was not a man to be slighted by other 
men, nor to be contemned by women. He had some- 
thing of the old squire’s contempt for the latter ; and, 
though he knew right well that he could have had the 
pick of the county for a wife, he did not choose mar- 
riage. He might have loved a mistress, but not a wife ; 
matrimony, which tames some men, would have con- 
verted this one into a despot. He felt seething within 
his bosom that wild spirit of revolt which agitated 
Burns ; that harsh pride which embittered Carlyle. 
He was a man to be caught in the toils of his own 
passions ; for strong passions need to be cooled by the 
fresh atmosphere of the intellect, and he had experi- 
enced no such cooling. This was what Pugh town had 
done in the way of education for Billy Fontaine’s 
youngest child. 

“ I do not wish to go in the little spring-wagon with 
Aunt Mary and Miss Spangler. I want to go on 
horseback,” announced Diana, turning boldly upon 
her uncle. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


59 


His answer was to thrust his two-tined fork across 
the table in order to attract Miss Mary Jane’s attention 
to the fact that he wanted another slice of fried mid- 
dling. Miss Fontaine lifted the dish containing this 
savory fry and tilted it towards him, speaking no word. 
Grat harpooned a slice with the point of his fork, 
flinging, the while, a half-mocking, half-choleric glare 
upon Diana. He found a secret satisfaction in this 
display of boorishness ; the fine curves he had set in 
motion in the girl’s features attracted him ; and he 
deepened them by asking with a snort, between mouth- 
fuls of coffee, — 

“ I suppose you don’t think Miss Spangler good 
enough to go with. Is that what you’re up to?” 

“ Not by half ; nor those slow-going plough-horses, 
either.” 

Diana was frank in her admission. “ My ambition 
is to ride Patsy, that nice little riding-horse you have 
just bought.” 

Fontaine laughed ; he was partially appeased by 
this praise of Patsy, his latest investment. He knew 
himself to be a connoisseur in horse-flesh. He forgot 
to be irritated by her scorn of the farm-cobs ; still he 
thought women had no right to be fastidious, and that 
they should be grateful for the smallest favors be- 
stowed upon them by their lords and masters. 

“ Come, Uncle Grattan, I can be as hard to please 
as you. Come, saddle Patsy for me, that’s a nice fellow ; 
won’t you ?” 

The mingling of entreaty with command was de- 
cidedly attractive to Fontaine, who had usually been 
approached by his women-folks in the strain of abject 


60 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


entreaty. It requires imperiousness to tame imperious- 
ness. Miss Mary Jane had never spoken to him thus 
boldly in her life. When he was a little fellow of 
four years, she had once besought him, with tears in 
her eyes, not to say, “ Damn my father !” and she had 
never dared to make a remonstrance but that once. 

“ Promise. Mind, Uncle Grattan, Patsy. Pve 
made up my mind to have nothing short of Patsy. I 
will not go in the spring- wagon. No, you shall not 
be able to tie me there,” ordered Diana, playing a 
queen’s role prettily. 

Uncles are like other men, and can be bewitched by 
a saucy mouth, no matter to whom it belongs; and 
Fontaine, as we have seen, sympathized with the class 
who demand rights and claim privileges. He looked 
at her leaning her arm upon the breakfast-table. This 
arm — round, firm, of warm creamy tint — was one of 
her beauties. It obeyed her impulses, and suggested 
deep reserves of energy pent up within, to culminate 
in art, labor, maternity, or what ? for into any of those 
channels the spirit might guide its fountain of zeal. 

Fontaine took a good long look at his niece, pleased 
with her person ; but that odious brier-rose smelled too 
much of the cultured class, of which she no doubt con- 
sidered herself an ornament. It tickled his sensitive 
nostrils and brought a wave of rebellion over him. 
Bah ! she was too much of a fine lady, after all ; the 
glitter of her lace-pin conveyed a challenge. He 
pushed back his chair, jumped up abruptly, and, 
settling his mustache with his right hand, walked 
noisily out of the room. At the barn, the aristocratic 
embellishments were effaced in his memory by youth- 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


61 


fill bloom and spirit. What man is not proud of a 
handsome kinswoman ? Grat worshipped strength, — 
and such a woman as this might tame him. He 
strolled up to the stile, when they were all ready to 
start, and stood for a moment watching Miss Mary 
Jane and Miss Vanessa Spangler climb up into the 
spring-wagon. 

All of a sudden, Diana, who was holding back, gave 
a little cry of delight, for she had caught sight of 
Black Wesley, coming down from the barn with stately 
step, leading Patsy by the bridle-rein. 

“ Well, isn’t that Patsy for you?” asked Grat, in a 
voice without a trace of gruffness in it. 

Her petition having been granted, Diana was not 
only full of gratitude, but generous in the expression 
of it. She threw out her arms impulsively, — the kind 
of arms a man would desire to be embraced by, and 
capable of saying, better than the lips, “ I love you ; 
you are mine.” 

Grattan smiled ; he was having his reward. 

“ You know it isn’t every girl I’d let ride this mare,” 
said Grattan, running his hand along the girth and 
feeling the check-strap of the stirrup to see if they 
were secure. “ But you look as if you could manage 
her. She’ll try your arms, too, before you are through.” 

“ Oh, I have so much more strength than I know 
what to do with. I long to feel my power !” 

She submitted to having a hideous black alpaca 
riding-skirt, belonging to Miss Mary Jane, fastened 
around her beribboned waist. 

“ Do you know I gave up going to town to-day, so 
as to let you have Patsy ; and I shall lose a chance 
6 


62 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


of meeting a man who owes me money, by not going ; 

but ” He stood stolid and mute under a shower of 

regretful thanks, hurried Diana into the saddle, and 
then, after a laconic, “ Keep a firm grip on the rein ; 
she’s a hard mouth,” he inflicted a pinch upon her 
arm, which left an orange and violet mark for days 
after. 

Diana did not flinch, however, under this sudden 
surprise of pain, for she comprehended that this sur- 
render of Patsy was the beginning of a compact of 
friendship betwixt them, and that the pinch was its 
seal. With a radiant smile of farewell, she gave a 
gentle jerk to the rein and started in pursuit of the 
spring-wagon, lumbering ahead in the muddy lane. 
This lane was always muddy, even in times of drought, 
on account of a spring which bubbled up into a trough, 
then spilt itself into a score of pretty rivulets criss- 
crossing, first, the lane, then the high-road, and, lastly, 
the adjacent field. 


CHAPTER. IV. 

Miss Sarah Jane Jackson was a woman with 
her uses. She was a famous assistant in the Pugh town 
neighborhood at funerals, weddings, and births. She 
had helped to lay out Billy Fontaine, and acknowledged 
him to be u the beauti fullest corpse ever she set eyes 
on.” She secretly worshipped Grat, who to her was 
Balder the Beautiful and Apollo the Bright, all in one. 
But realizing the hopelessness of this passion, she 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


63 


found consolation in loading his sister with attentions, 
and sending to him, through this lukewarm messenger, 
the newest hiving of honey, the prize melon of her 
patch, or a bottle of home-made wine, — currant-wine, 
with several winters’ age upon it, was to this good 
creature the next thing to sherry. The Valley Farm 
was her earthly paradise, and she usually “ had a call 
to go” there in the time of apple-butter boiling, bush- 
meeting, and harvesting. Happy was Miss Sarah 
Jane when she could banquet those bead-bright eyes 
of hers upon handsome Grat. Sometimes she would 
pester him with inquiries after his health ; and when, 
at last, she drove him beyond her range, to the out- 
skirts of the farm, she would sit down quietly in the 
chimney-corner, take out her wild cherry-stick and dip 
snuff, surrendering herself the while to love-dreams. 
A small modicum of sentimentality, however, sufficed ; 
for she was an eager, active, nervous creature, welcome 
everywhere, because she was a useful one, also. 

She stood on her bird-nest porch as the cavalcade 
wound up to the stile, and greeted her guests with 
effusive, almost girlish, eagerness. The sun of mid- 
morning in July poured down its vertical rays upon 
the stocks and gillies in Miss Sarah Jane’s garden and 
well-nigh converted Diana to slat bonnets, her cheeks 
being so burned, whereas Vanessa Spangler’s were of 
their usual dull brownish red, untouched with fresh 
tan. 

Miss Sarah Jane lost no time in conducting the three 
guests to the little parlor, which to Diana seemed a 
heaven of coolness, shut away from the garish sunlight 
by green blinds. They all sat down stiffly in chairs at 


64 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


right angles with the wall, and Miss Sarah Jane pulled 
off her brown calico slat-bonnet. In the patch of 
tender light stealing in through the open door, she 
looked forty-six, though, in reality, she was not more 
than thirty-six. Women age more quickly in the 
country than in town. Had she been city-bred, she 
would have known how to soften these abrupt features 
and harsh face-lines by a thousand arts ; as it was, she 
could not have displayed them more. What might 
have been, under flattering accessories, viyacity, was 
now aggressive sharpness. She wore unbecoming 
colors and combed her hair straight back from a thin 
face, whose features were strongly marked, like those 
of a man. Her voice, too, touched upon the manly 
register, and perpetually gave the lie to her feminine 
giggle, her hysterical squeals, and nervous jumps. 
Poor creature ! with all her smartness and all her 
energy, she had never grown up, but was a mingling 
of maturity and rawness. 

“ Let’s go up,” said Miss Sarah Jane, in a few 
minutes, skittish, as if a flea were biting her. Her 
Mozambique dress intensified the wiriness of her tall, 
angular figure, and the bright pink stripes set yellow 
tones loose in her complexion ; an embroidered collar, 
fastened with a hair breast-pin and worn low, showed 
several inches too much of a stringy throat, which the 
innocent lady, a trifle too gay in her tastes, had deco- 
rated with a green ribbon-bridle ; her hands were pro- 
tected by sheepskin half-handers, the palms ensan- 
guined by the crimson blood of the raspberries she had 
been crushing for dinner. 

.“You must lay off your things, now. Come up, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


65 


Miss Mary Jane ; come, Miss Dianny ; come up, 
Venessy.” 

She apostrophized each guest with strict impartiality, 
and then led the way up a steep flight of steps to a 
large double-bedded chamber on the floor above. 
“ How delicious !” Diana, letting loose her favorite 
adjective, drew off her gloves, pushed back her hat, 
and sank into an easy-chair. Miss Mary Jane, more 
fortnal than her niece, forebore to remove sun-bonnet 
or gloves until specially invited to do so by the mis- 
tress of the house ; this being Pughtown etiquette. 
Miss Spangler’s pride was of a morbidly sensitive type, 
and she thought the city-bred nonchalance of Diana 
Fontaine a disagreeable form of patronage. Perhaps 
she realized vaguely that the younger Miss Fontaine 
looked upon the world from a too narrowly aesthetic 
stand-point, regarding every one in it as a background 
to herself. 

“Why, Miss Sarah Jane, your bed is as big as a 
house.” 

Diana sprang up from her chair, letting fall the 
hideous alpaca riding-skirt, ran her hand up and down 
the quilt, and, thinking of the castle of Indolence, she 
said, “A nap in this bed would be the luxury of 
luxuries ; wouldn’t it, Aunt Mary ?” 

Miss Mary Jane looked offended ; for this speech, 
innocent though it was, seemed to her a criticism upon 
the beds at the Valley Farm. “ One would think the 
girl had never seen a bed before ; and she from the 
city, too,” was Miss Spangler’s satirical comment, 
delivered inly. 

“You are welcome to take a nap in it, honey, when- 

« 6 * 


66 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ever you feel like it, that you are,” was the response, 
for speeches often please a hostess which offend a 
fellow-guest. 

“ I made this quilt ; first one I ever made ; and I 
think it’s my prettiest, too. Don’t you like it better 
than the one in the room as used to be Paw’s, Miss 
Mary Jane?” 

“ Yes, I reckon so, Sary ; it’s a richer pattern, like.” 

It was a rich pattern. Upon a white ground were 
scattered baskets of gorgeous red and yellow tulips ; 
vines supporting birds of an infinite variety of hues, 
and composed of bits of variegated calico, all in stuffed 
work, the whole quilted in an intricate design. 

Pleased with Diana’s appreciation of her handiwork, 
Miss Sarah Jane proposed to unlock several other 
quilts. While she was thus engaged, the young lady 
flitted about the room on a tour of discovery, peep- 
ing into the vase of skeleton leaves on the mantle, 
inspecting the blue celluloid comb and brush which 
lay clasped in a kind of religious expectation upon the 
bureau, or touching with prying fingers the pin-cushion 
upon which the word “ Welcome” was outlined in 
pins. The chairs, dressed up in chintz covers ruffled 
at the bottom, looked comfortably human, as if they 
might be younger sisters of Miss Sarah Jane, who 
fingered one of them as she talked, pulling the ruffles 
down over the legs, as if they were pantalettes. 

“Do show me all the charming queer things you 
have in your house ; won’t you, Miss Sarah Jane ?” 
said Diana, when she had seen all the quilts ; and Miss 
Sarah Jane did. Rude though her taste was, this lady 
had a concept of beauty. Not so Miss Spangler. If 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


67 


we except her admiration of McElroy’s handsome face, 
she was utilitarian to the core, never having thought in 
her life, unless vaguely, when the animal within her, 
stirred to sensations of hunger, cold, or sublimed to a 
barbaric jealousy, the strongest emotion she was capable 
of. Perhaps Diana Fontaine had never really thought, 
either ; though she would have been the last to admit 
such a fact. She had done a good deal of feeling of 
the subtler sort, and she considered herself, no doubt, 
a personage of deep sentiments. 

They descended to the parlor, a chef-d’oeuvre of 
ingenuity. On the walls were prints enclosed in frames 
made of nutshells glued together, which would have 
driven a squirrel mad. The lintels of the door and 
the window-casings were bright blue ; the curtains 
were modelled upon a pair which Miss Sarah Jane had 
seen at the Fawnystawk’s when she had helped to lay 
out the old lady. 

“And the whitewashing I done by myself. The 
ladder slipped and laid me up nigh about two months 
with a sprained ankle. That was the winter I eat for 
my Christmas dinner two slices o’ dried-apple pie, 
settin’ alone by the kitchen fire. My lot’s a lonely 
one, Miss Dianny.” 

Miss Sarah Jane never failed to talk on a steady streak 
when she had the chance; so much of her life was 
passed in solitude, that these chances were rare indeed. 

“ Oh, and here’s the place where my geraniums stay 
in the winter-time. I set up a whole night, once, to 
keep my Lady Washington from freezing. I put my 
shawl over her, and kept the fire up, and watched and 
watched until daybreak.” 


68 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Did she freeze ?” asked Diana, in quick sympathy. 

“Not that night. That was the worst night of the 
season. I set there and talked it out to her. She were 
one great mass of white flowers, and there was not so 
much as one tetched. Then there come another freeze 
in March ; not so bad ; but I weren’t expecting of it, 
and that night she went. I felt as if something were 
going wrong, somehow ; slept uncomfortable, and when 
I went to look, first thing in the morning, she were 
black as a cinder. I set down an’ cried ; I couldn’t 
help it, for the life of me. It seemed like it wuz a 
sure enough persin, and I loved it.” 

Miss Sarah Jane shut her eyes to see in imagina- 
tion the beautiful Lady Washington that had met such 
an untimely end ; Miss Mary Jane and Miss Spangler, 
superior to such weaknesses, looked straight ahead in 
scornful silence. Presently Miss Sarah Jane opened 
her eyes, and, catching sight at once of a thread upon 
one of her rugs, stooped down and flicked it away 
with the utmost care. 

“ You give me these pieces ; do you remember, Miss 
Mary Jane?” she said, smoothing affectionately the 
gay stripes of a couple of rugs made of worsted rags 
knitted together. “ You give me these pieces when I 
was up to the Farm two years ago come next fifteenth 
day of September. It were when your Maw wuz laid 
out. Do you remember, we went over all the chists 
together ?” 

Miss Mary Jane remembered with a sigh. 

The parlor was crammed with things : vases upon 
the mantelpiece contained tall bouquets of varnished 
autumn leaves, very brittle and darkly brilliant ; there 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


69 


were two robins’ nests and a painted China dog, a 
“ keepsake,” Miss Sarah Jane said. In one corner 
stood the knick-knack table, with its cover of stamped 
oil-cloth, the point hanging down in front with strict 
accuracy ; on it were displayed, in rigid elaborate- 
ness, a row of daguerrotypes open ; a huge conch shell, 
a gilded cup and saucer, and a scarlet Book of Beauty, 
also “a keepsake,” explained Miss Sarah Jane, using 
this as a sort of company word, and taking up the 
volume tenderly, so as to dust with her sleeve its red 
and gold title. 

“ I set a heap of store on this, Miss Mary Jane,” 
she said. “ It is a keepsake give me by Paw’s youngest 
brother, who went out West tb live when I were a little 
thing in my paddies.” 

After some talk about the spring-house, the calf that 
had been weaned, and the cow that had gone dry, Miss 
Sarah Jane went off to the kitchen, leaving her guests 
to entertain each other. Then followed a dreary in- 
terval. They all sat down in black horse-hair chairs, 
Miss Spangler with an album containing photographs 
of Confederate generals; Diana beside the window, 
which let in a honeyed scent from the sweet peas, phlox, 
and marigolds in the garden ; the flowers were pouring 
out their souls to the warm wind, and a tall rose-bush 
a-bloom under the shutters sent out its penetrating 
sweetness over all the others, like a high, pure soprano 
voice. Diana surrendered herself to a translation of 
odor into sound, disturbed now and then by a deep 
sigh from her aunt. Miss Mary Jane Fontaine had 
passed so many years of her life in self-repression that 
a talent for dumbness had developed to a wonderful 


70 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


degree. She could sit for hours “ hatching one foot,” 
Grat said, without opening her lips. She never won- 
dered at anything; never regarded anything as strange; 
but considered life a series of monotonous pursuits 
arranged by our heavenly Father in order to prepare 
us for death. She looked upon this fair world which 
God has made as a kind of poorly kept public-house, 
wherein we stay such a short time that it does not 
make much difference what we do or do not have ; and 
upon the Creator as a grudging landlord, who filled up 
a long bill of benefits conferred, and demanded a large 
pay in return. A drought, a freshet, a death, a failure 
in the crops, it was all the same, and all for the best. 
The intensity of this lady’s resignation had dried up 
the fountains of her sympathy and paralyzed the cur- 
rents of her soul. It was the philosophy of hopeless- 
ness, a pessimism ; not even picturesque : it was drear 
and dreary ; and it was not to be wondered at that 
Grat turned away from his sister, revolted by her re- 
ligion of negation. 

A peculiarly long-drawn sigh on the part of Miss 
Mary Jane was changing to a snore, when dinner was 
announced, — dinner, the piece de resistance in the 
domestic drama of country life. Cooking is the art in 
which the Hessian excels. Such fried chicken ! such 
cream gravy ! such hot rolls ! beside the famous 
French entrees; they are what the real gentleman is 
beside a dancing-master. No unknown lurking flavors, 
no minced-up tid-bits ; but excellent, hearty, frankly 
revealed flavors; the chicken tastes of chicken, and 
not of something else. If you have once eaten a dinner 
in Pughtown, you have your standard set for all time. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


71 


It is a meal - for a transcendentalism It has absorbed 
the energy of several women, and is the fulfilment of 
an ideal which generations have labored to reach. The 
receipts have been handed down, after long success, as 
tradition, rather might we say history. 

Miss Sarah Jane, fly-brush in hand, sat at the head 
of the table, watching her guests, but not eating her- 
self, which occupation would have been too coarse for 
the artist who has mixed the sauces, rolled out the 
pastry, yellowed the pickle, to make it look bronzy ; 
blended essences of almond, vanilla, lemon, and pine- 
apple; constructed four-storied cakes, with entresols 
of cocoanut and caramel ; carved the sweetmeats into 
copies of fishes, leaves, birds. There was no wonder 
that Miss Spangler fell to musing over the happy 
destiny of being McElroy’s bride, with Cousin Sarah 
Jane to make the wedding-cake. There was no wonder 
that Diana ate recklessly, and that Miss Mary Jane, 
yielding to a glass of currant wine, felt imparted to 
her on the instant a more cheerful view of life. 

Miss Sarah Jane was hypercritical in her judgment 
even of those dishes wherein she excelled, and she 
often said, “ It don’t pay to eat after this one and that 
one ; it isn’t every one as knows how to keep a churn 
clean, the particularest part of the job of butter-making ; 
there aren’t much you can tell me about that ; ef I’d 
as many dollars as I’ve made pounds of butter since 
I’ve been alive, I’d be good and well off now. I’ll 
eat butter up to the Valley Farm and up to Fawny- 
stawk’s, but I’d be pisoned before I’d take a taste in 
town ; the town folks don’t know what they’re eatin’ 
one-half the time.” Then, with a “ Make out your 


72 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


dinner, V’nessy ; make out yours, Dianny,” and, with 
her strict impartiality as a hostess, “ make out a meal, 
Miss Mary Jane,” she rose from the table, seeing that 
her guests were replete, she not having touched a morsel. 

The earlier part of the afternoon was spent in the 
state of quiescence favorable to digestion. The elder 
ladies repaired to the outer shed to inspect the new 
bantam’s eggs, curiosities for size, and to see how 
quickly the tomatoes were reddening in their rows 
along the window-sills. The younger ladies went to 
the guest-chamber, and Vanessa, laying her face, in 
tint like a cheap chromo, upon the pillow of the bed 
with the gorgeous quilt, fell fast asleep. Diana found 
the feathers too heating for a nap, so she pushed the 
shutters open to make a brighter light, and leaned out 
of the window. What drowsy silence prevailed ; a fly 
buzzed on the pane, a rooster crowed in the yard, with 
dreamy, prolonged crow ; now that he had the world 
to himself, he seemed determined to make the most of 
his music and demand the flattering attention bestowed 
upon the singing-birds. He attempted a series of 
badly-executed trills, which turned out to be too great 
an effort for his throat, proof that roosters are not ex- 
pected in this world of limitations to play the role of 
canary. 

The heat was intolerable. Diana wondered why the 
little round summer-apples swinging on the trees did 
not bake as they hung. 

“ It is an afternoon for a bath. The brook ! I hear 
it singing behind the spring-house. Oh, the coolness 
of it ! Miss Vanessa, Miss Vanessa, wake up,” she 
cried close to that young lady’s drowsy ear. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


73 

Miss Spangler unclosed her large, prominent, porce- 
lain-blue eyes without a ray of intelligence in them. 

“ Don’t go to sleep again ; it will give you a head- 
ache, sure. Besides, I have the most delightful plan.” 
A ray of consciousness glimmered in Miss Spangler’s 
eyes. Diana went on. “ A bath in the brook. Come, 
let’s go and find Miss Sarah Jane.” In youth, spirits 
are contagious. Miss Spangler shook off sleep, but its 
fumes still clung to her as she went down-stairs, slug- 
gishly, to look for Diana, whom she found in the parlor 
talking with an enthusiasm which went straight to Miss 
Sarah Jane’s heart. 

“ Bathe in the brook, honey ? That you shall, and 
in Back Crick, too, if you’ve a mind to. I’ll go with 
you ; we’ll all go.” 

It seemed a pity that middle age should have set its 
seal upon Miss Sarah Jane’s body, while it left her 
spirit as yet untouched. She turned to include Miss 
Mary Jane Fontaine in the party ; but that lady shook 
her head. With her, bathing was a strictly utilitarian 
occupation, to be indulged in, not for pleasure, but for 
the purpose of removing extraneous matter from the 
skin. In her mind, there was no sharp line to sep- 
arate the pleasant from the carnal, and the two would 
intermingle. 

“ The Run,” she said, as she took her seat in the 
half-lighted parlor, on a black-painted chair with 
rockers so small that they reminded you of a young 
bullock whose horns are beginning to sprout; “the 
Run. Why, you’ll get more dirt on you nor you’ll be 
able to wash off in good spring- water this many a day.” 

“ The dirt ! Why, that’s part of the fun,” said Miss 
d 7 


74 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Sarah Jane, who, in spite of her boldness, stood a little 
in awe of her friend’s low-spirited philosophy. 

Miss Mary Jane, in the luxury of dreariness, gave 
a sigh that was half- aspirate, half-tonic, and unfolded 
the “ Methodist Episcopal” which lay upon her knee. 

“You two girls put off down yon path past the 
spring-house to them willows, and I’ll ketch up with 
you in no time with the bath-dresses.” 

Miss Sarah Jane gave forth an excited but sup- 
pressed laugh which sounded very much like a snicker. 
Her mirth was genuine, but it was not beautiful ; it 
would never have inspired a writer of odes lik^ Diana’s. 
This young person followed the path pointed out, in 
a whirlwind of high spirits, past the spring-house, 
through a dimpling piece of field arcaded by forest 
oaks; then she hastened her steps and reached the 
Run quite out of breath. What a lovely stream ! It 
measured the little valley, shut in betwixt two ridges, 
with its liquid length. Now its waters were of a mellow, 
russet-tone, recessed at this point by water-willows and 
pollard-willows, interspersed with oak and maple, so 
that they reflected the rich brown soil of either bank, 
which the sun, drooping a little now, but still brilliant, 
kindled into that noble and living color which we see 
in finest bronze-work; in the oak-leaf when it turns 
in October ; in the monumental tree-bole when it has 
taken upon itself the rich yet sombre mosaic work of 
moss and lichen. 

‘Diana’s bathing-dress turned out to be a white 
dimity wrapper which Miss Sarah Jane had reserved 
through the years of chance and change, thinking that 
she might one day use it as a shroud. As it must be 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


75 


used on an extraordinary occasion, why not this as well 
as any other ? Gay young girls, alive in every pore, who 
thank God because man had been allowed by Him to 
create nymphs and fauns and dryads and satyrs, were 
guests so rare at Miss Sarah Jane Jackson’s that the 
occasion of their coming might well be called extraordi- 
nary. Would this untrammelled, color-loving, Hel- 
lenic virgin ever convert her worship of nymphs into 
that of saints ? This is not a question to be answered 
on the spot, in the presence of the young lady herself, 
who stood under a tree, poking with one naked foot 
the root ramifications that lay coiled like a snake on 
the slope of the bank, plaiting a tress of long, thick 
brown hair, and humming, with a kind of wanton 
sweetness, — 

“ A hundred months have passed, Lorina, 

Since last I held thy hand in mine.” 

The sleeves of Miss Sarah Jane’s shroud, thus hastily 
converted into a bathing-dress, being wide, disclosed 
the rounded elbow and pliant wrist as Diana half 
bowed her arm for the purpose of hair-plaiting. 

That were a grand piece of dimity, to be sure ; it 
could outlast more than one lifetime, thought Miss 
Sarah Jane, admiring the double ruffles, which were 
certainly becoming to the young girl, and the pearl 
buttons, which the latter fastened with as much non- 
chalance as if pe^rl buttons grew in the thickets as 
plentifully as blackberry blossoms. Miss Sarah Jane 
and Vanessa had to be satisfied with spotted brown 
calico frocks to bathe in ; shrouds not being found in 
profusion in any woman’s wardrobe, no matter how 


76 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


beforehanded and prudent she may be. When arrayed 
for the bath, Miss Spangler paused, beginning to feel 
compunctions about entering the brown water, which 
to Diana seemed to be of so rich and soft a hue. Miss 
Spangler wondered if there were frogs or lizards in 
the pool, or snakes, and with this climax she gave vent 
to a high feminine squeal that set your very teeth on 
edge. 

“ Nonsense !” cried Diana, sending out a gleeful 
laugh. “ You must go in with a dash, and then you 
will frighten them away.” So saying, she bent for- 
ward, pausing an instant to smile back to her own face 
reflected in the water, then lifting her arms high and 
bringing her hands together so that palm touched palm 
after the fashion of divers, she gave a downward 
spring, and, touching the calm, serious surface of the 
stream, sent its waters into flashing jets about her, so 
that she was stolen from view for a few minutes ; then 
seen, ahead, breasting the current, her dimity gown, 
translucent over gleaming flesh, took the gliding move- 
ment of a swan. 

Miss Sarah Jane led a series of ha-ha’s from the 
bank, after which, catching Vanessa by the gown, she 
splashed into the Run, where they both floundered 
about like a couple of ignoble ducks striving in vain 
to imitate the motions of the stately swan. 

Never had this retired spot been so jubilant ; it was 
a mad midsummer revel. Miss Spangler got her 
mouth full of mud, and, receiving shocks of water 
plump in her face from the hands of the frolicking 
Sarah Jane, declared in shouts, broken by peals of 
laughter, that she was strangling, and that Miss Fon- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


77 


taine must come to her rescue. Diana, swimming on- 
wards in superb unconcern, turned her throat so as to 
bend backwards her head and survey the two women 
who stood struggling and ha-ha-ing in the stream, 
with no higher conception of mirth than noise. Just 
so might Amphitrite, queen of the sea, have regarded a 
couple of inferior nymphs. 

“ Help ! help !” shrieked Vanessa Spangler, in mimic 
terror, essaying to get out of reach of the shower-baths 
with which Miss Sarah was persistently douching her. 

“ Come here. Do you see that smooth stone on the 
brink? You will find it a perfect seat, with the willow 
all around you, and the water halfway up. Come, 
Miss Vanessa, give me your hand.” Diana stood up- 
right, as she strove to encourage the shrinking Miss 
Spangler to take a few steps forward. 

“ Ugh ! it is so slimy. Suppose — suppose ” Miss 

Spangler gave a half-smothered little scream ; she 
thought that she had put her foot on the snake, which, 
to her, was ubiquitoys. 

“ Suppose — don’t suppose anything, or you’ll never 
make headway. That wasn’t a snake you touched, but 
a smooth, flat pebble. Good : you are getting on well, 
now ; a few steps more ; here, give me your hand.” 

Thus encouraged, Miss Spangler, reeling like a 
drunken man, fearing at each instant that she would 
go down into some dreadful hole, staggered forward, 
her arms tremblingly outstretched toward Diana. 
Miss Sarah Jane continued to splash water upon her 
from behind, urging her on at the same time with 
good-humored hostility. 

As Diana leaned forward to take Miss Spangler’s 
7 * 


78 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


hand, the water, waist-high, leaving unconcealed the 
upper half of her figure, a violent rattling of the tree- 
boughs on the opposite bank startled the three bathers. 
Diana glanced around anxiously, but was forced the 
next instant to concentrate her energies upon Miss 
Spangler, who threatened to collapse on the spot. 

“ I believe it’s a man,” cried Miss Sarah Jane, to 
whom the dragon — man — was as ubiquitous as the 
serpent was to Miss Spangler. She stood straight up 
in her frock, catching the air like a balloon in the back, 
and showing darts in the front of the bodice that 
seemed to be painted upon that lady’s wet bosom. She 
crossed the Run at a couple of strides in order to take 
further observations. 

The word man wellnigh gave Miss Spangler an- 
other convulsion, for, with all her adipose matter, she 
was but a timid creature. Diana had to say, reassur- 
ingly, “ A man? Nonsense. It is the wind in the 
willows or some crows lighting on the maples yonder. 
I believe I will go and investigate /or myself.” 

She turned, as she spoke, to cross the stream. Her 
dimity gown, having entirely lost the hard lines of a 
shroud, melted to the mould of her figure like an outer 
layer of skin to which the inner made a rose-flushed 
lining. So close did the dimity cling to the round of 
her bust, that she seemed like a delicately nude statue 
from which offending realism of detail has been swept by 
the sculptor’s poetic hand. One arm was lifted, for she 
was squeezing the water from her hair, and Ned Fon- 
taine, her father, would have exclaimed, had he been 
present, “ the Diana of the bath come to life but it 
was not Ned Fontaine’s ghost who flung aside the 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


79 


intervening willow boughs on the left-hand side of the 
Run to look at the bathers. Who was the interloper ? 
It needed but a second glance to recognize McElroy’s 
handsome blond face and full, sleepy blue eyes resting 
with indolent admiration upon the rondure of Diana’s 
bust and the gleaming nakedness of her beautiful arms. 
His eyes had a brief moment granted them for admi- 
ration, for the young girl, quick as thought, slipped 
down into the sheltering water, which stole all of her 
from view except the face, whose dainty chin just 
grazed the surface of the stream, as she made paddling 
movements with her arms, one of her long plaits float- 
ing about her like a mesh of brown seaweed. 

As soon as Miss Spangler’s eyes had communicated 
to her brain the fact that McElroy was standing behind 
the willows looking at them, she gave a series of little 
yells, quite piteous to hear, and gathering her flowered 
calico about her, though its saturated folds clogged each 
step, she made a bound, impossible except under strong 
excitement, plunged into the thicket and hid behind a 
tree, with all the bashfulness and shame of having been 
discovered in some guilty act ; for, with all her obtuse- 
ness, she had an overmastering fear of violating the 
proprieties. 

“ Excuse me, ladies,” began McElroy, lazily, in no 
haste for the scene to change. “I would not have 
intruded, for the world, on such a nice, cool, private, 
little place as this ; but we were passing in the buggy, 
Loughborough and I, and heard cries of help, help. 
Somebody was being drowned in the run, we thought. 
The grade is very near, you see, though you’d hardly 
think it, the bushes are so thick.” 


80 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Yes, the road was humiliatingly near ; Diana per- 
ceived this fact now for the first time. And yet who 
would have thought of any one passing ; she had con- 
sidered herself quite out of the world. 

“I had a lift in the morning as far as Appleby’s 
store, where Loughborough picked me up, and I per- 
suaded him to bring me home by Miss Sarah Jane’s.” 
He turned to look for Miss Sarah Jane that he might 
make his bow ; but that lady had departed, having 
nearly flapped herself out of her wet dress, and her 
skin, too, in her haste to get home and make additions 
to the bill of fare for tea; for she was one of the 
women who think that there is nothing in this world 
quite good enough for the men to eat. 

How Miss Vanessa’s heart beat behind the butter- 
nut-tree, where she stood shivering in her one dripping 
garment as if she had the ague upon her. “ Then he 
came clear round this way for to see me,” she said to 
herself, and began to warm with shy happiness. 

“ Where’s Loughborough ?” 

“ Oh, he’s gone back to the buggy,” explained Mc- 
Elroy, still lingering among the shrubs of the brake, 
in hopes of seeing Diana lift her arm again, or dis- 
close the free curve of her throat where it blended with 
the ampler curve of breast and shoulder. He thought 
Loughborough a fool to have deprived himself will- 
ingly of the pretty picture of a woman bathing. He 
did not go back in his mind over those scenes in which 
Bathsheba, Ovid’s Diana, and Rubens’s nymphs figured, 
bewitching men’s souls from them ; he only thought of 
the present moment and of the scene before him, which 
was of the kind that has pleased men in all ages. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


81 


“ I should think that the most sensible thing that 
you could do would be to go back to the buggy,” was 
Diana’s comment, as with magnificent arm-strokes she 
shot off down the current, intending not to stop short 
of Lowton’s Gap, where the Run breaks into a rocky 
chasm, an effectual barrier to the best of swimmers. 

“ Since I am not needed for rescuing a drowning 

man or woman, I’ll But the words were wasted, 

the young lady having glided past the hearing of them. 
McElroy still stood to watch the shining rift she made 
in the water as she floated forward. Since he was to 
feast his eyes no longer, he converted the begun apology, 
trembling upon his lip, into the strain, — 

“ A hundred months have passed, Lorina,” 

turned on his heel and tramped across the under-brush 
to the buggy, where Loughborough sat impatiently 
whistling. 

“ Well, are you satisfied with your view of half- 
naked women ?” was the question, ironically put. 

“ Half satisfied only,” was the saucy rejoinder. 

“What in the name of the devil, Loughborough, 
did you get away before having a glimpse of that girl’s 
superb shoulders and bust ?” 

“I don’t swear by the devil, McElroy,” was the 
answer, with a frown. 

With a shrug, the blonde troubadour threw into 
Lorina a wild sweetness, set off with more grace notes 
than usual, and the buggy wheels rolled forward. Diana, 
at the stream’s bend, paused, leaned on her side, with a 
critical turn of her head, to catch the chords faintly 
fluting through the trees. 

/ 


82 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


CHAPTER Y. 

At tea, that night, Miss Sarah Jane called the roll 
of all her jams, jellies, marmalades, and butters. What 
a rainbow of colors they made - on the unbleached do- 
mestic table-cloth ! The faint yellow-brown of the 
pear subdued the rich chestnut-brown of the quince- 
butter, while the straw-colored apple-jelly kept in check 
the almost too deep crimson of the strawberry preserve. 
The sweets being the belles of her pantry, were pleas- 
antly disposed so as to provoke contrast in tints, for a 
Pughtown lady must find her picture-gallery upon her 
tea-table, if she finds it anywhere. You cannot long 
for pictures, if you have never seen them ; but that 
does not prevent every human soul from having its 
craving for color. Miss Sarah Jane, therefore, dis- 
played with an affectionately lavish hand her stewed 
cherries in solferino juice ; her pumpkin butter of per- 
fect mould ; her “ cow butter,” printed to represent a 
swan, very much as a town-bred woman would exhibit 
her work in decorative painting. 

There were viands enough to suit every palate which 
the human race has engendered, with but one fault, and 
that was a too great crowding cf dishes. Each one 
seemed quarrelling for more room, that they all might 
better show themselves off. Indeed, some of the lesser 
dishes had to be slightly tilted up so as to be got in, 
and this derogated very much from their dignity, of 
course. Then those low, little salt-cellars would keep 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


83 


getting under them and tripping them up; the dish 
of stewed cherries, in this way, very nearly discharged 
the whole of its contents upon the table-cloth. The 
blue and white China was set out ; also the Holland 
napkins, a rare luxury ; the three-pronged forks, and 
the steel- instead of the horn-handled knives. There 
was one cunning fancy which Miss Sarah Jane had 
worked into her plan of arrangements ; one which no 
one had the sensibility to perceive, — pathetic waste of 
sentiment, which was, the placing of the most becoming 
dish in front of each guest. Loughborough, rough- 
and-ready, commanded the smoked sausage; Captain 
McElroy showed reflected upon his blonde face the 
hot flush of the sliced red tomatoes ; Miss Spangler’s 
crude coloring was brought into juxtaposition with the 
solemn pansy-purple of the damson-cheese. A pitcher 
of frothing milk stood in front of Miss Mary Jane ; 
a low, u real cut-glass” dish containing curds over- 
sprinkled with pepper and deluged with the richest 
cream, made a spot of virginal purity and freshness in 
front of Diana Fontaine ; while Miss Sarah Jane re- 
served for herself a capacious dish filled with the 
inevitable fried chicken flanked by crisp little paste- 
cakes, the whole reposing in a lake of white gravy. 

If education means choosing, then here was a chance 
to display education in its subtlest form. Indeed, it 
would have puzzled the most discriminating brain as 
to which of the breads you must choose, for you could 
not partake of them all. The orthodox loaf of salt- 
rising bread, plain, it is true, but sweet and grainy, 
and of a firm texture like pound-cake, made you feel 
doubtful, in the more odorous presence of the hot 


84 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


rusks standing on the corner of the table like a group 
of lovely young sisters, the pale yellow top-crusts var- 
nished with a coating of sugar and white of egg, and 
taking the lamp-light in a playful, pleasant way. Miss 
Mary Jane tore these resisting members of one family 
apart ruthlessly, after which they all sat down on the 
dish, meek and flaky, as who would say, “ United we 
stood, divided we fall” to somebody’s share. 

If the cake was on drill at dinner, it was now on a full- 
dress parade. There seemed to be no end to the variety. 
There were gold and silver cakes ; marble, spice and layer 
cakes ; jumbles rough on the top with sugar and finished 
off in the centre with a raisin ; while as climax to the 
scene, Hecuba brought in from the shed-pantry a wide 
dish well packed with doughnuts, that smiled upon the 
company by means of the grease which had fried them ; 
they lost no time in importuning the appetite of all 
present, you may rest assured, so inviting did they look. 

Vanessa Spangler sat at the side of McElroy, the 
flush of conscious bashfulness on her cheek. She 
sought her plate with eyes that feared to meet his gaze, 
while to invitations that she should partake of this or 
that dainty she iterated and reiterated, “ I don’t choose 
any, Miss Sarah Jane, ’deed and ’deed I don’t.” 

She might have spared herself the fireworks of ex- 
pression, for McElroy had eyes only upon one, — that 
one, Diana. Miss Spangler, looking up at last, sur- 
prised his glance bent upon Diana with a warmth that 
shocked her. He had never looked so at her ; that he 
could, was a revelation. She colored almost purple, 
her eyes distended with hysterical excitement. She 
seemed on the verge of an outburst of tears, to prevent 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


85 


which she set herself to chewing a bit of cake in a hard, 
mechanical way, as if it had no taste in it. She was 
unnoticed by any of the party except Loughborough ; 
his keen professional eye took in, with grave interest, 
each phase of this sudden metamorphosis. It is these 
heavy, inelastic temperaments that are slain by their 
passions. There was a sullen scowl upon her forehead 
when she turned to look at Diana, who sat on the same 
side of the table with her, but fronting McElroy. 

Mountain water had given an unusual transparency 
to Miss Fontaine’s skin, and the atmosphere had deep- 
ened its tone to an unwonted, rose. A gown of tissue 
web, lavender in tint, opened at her throat, then took 
the gentle swell of her breast and narrowed at the 
waist, with but slight diminishment of curve. Her 
brown hair, damp from the bath, lay upon her shoul- 
ders in two plaits ; perhaps they clung unpleasantly, 
impeding the movements of her throat, for she shook 
her head now and then impatiently, so as to displace 
them, after which they showed a wet trace upon the 
lavender gown. She was a natural girl ; one endowed, 
fortunately, with innocent instincts. Voluptuousness 
in her was of the tender kind, — either softened down 
to an enthusiasm for beauty or heightened into a pas- 
sion for the athletic. Up to the present day, her pur- 
poses had been whims ; her ideas, fancies ; her thoughts, 
dreams. She was unfettered as yet by the bonds of 
conventionality, — the world being to her a gentle- 
woman’s park ; a place half wild, half cultivated, in 
which to roam for beauty’s, pleasure’s, love’s sake, and 
breathe the air of liberty. Like the forest, cities often- 
times breed courage especially of opinion. This quality 


86 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


struck you in Diana. She was no slave to a narrow 
etiquette, but an empress, who framed her own code to 
suit her own taste. You could tell this by her spon- 
taneity of feeling, her freedom of manner, her frank- 
ness of utterance, and, also, by the direct gaze with 
which she encountered the eye of man or beast. Sit- 
ting in front of McElroy, her arms appealed to him, 
dry, as much as they had done, wet ; her loose sleeves 
showed them bare to the elbows ; abundantly developed, 
they would have reminded a sculptor of a grand old 
frieze ; an ordinary man of love. 

McElroy tried to intercept a glance now and then as 
he made an occasion of handing her a dish of something ; 
but Diana’s glances were not to be decoyed by the will 
of a merely handsome fellow like McElroy. Besides 
which, she was out of touch with him now ; irritated 
since he had disturbed them at the bath ; but she was 
too proud to show her irritation otherwise than by a 
marked repose of demeanor. The modern Dianas, un- 
like the goddess of the bow, must hide their anger, for 
ours is a tamer life than the archaic one. The mantle 
of dignity amused and piqued the naughty McElroy, 
who loved to study women and their ways. In his 
eagerness to twitch it aside, he sent the arrow of sus- 
picious jealousy deep into Miss Spangler’s bosom. 

Miss Sarah Jane, at the head of the table, her face 
flushed like a peony, conducted a conversation with 
Loughborough on strictly professional subjects; for 
it was not often that she had a doctor at her elbow 
into whose ear she could pour the accouiit of her in- 
firmities. She considered it a duty to need medicine 
just as she did, in affairs of the soul, to need grace. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


87 


To say that she clutched the opportunity would not be 
an exaggeration ; for she felt that it was nothing short 
of a sensible economy to fortify herself, by means of 
professional advice, not only against the diseases which 
she now had, but against any which might come upon 
her during the next six months. 

“ Now, what’s to pay, doctor ? I’ve been a havin’ 
of my neuralgy in spells as would fetch the tears to 
your eyes if you was by to see.” 

“The devil’s to pay, madam. Look yonder, will 
you ?” Loughborough waved his great muscular hand 
in the direction of several dishes. 

Miss Sarah Jane gave a start. “ Great Scott ! Is 
it the stewed cherries as is turned over ?” she cried. 
“I mistrusted that white dish as has the pestering 
little knobs on the bottom. It’s that treacherous — ” 

“ Nothing of the kind.” Loughborough interrupted 
the vision of a red sea of cherry-juice deluging her 
well-mangled table-cloth. “ But, my dear Miss Sarah 
Jane, how can you expect to keep clear of neuralgia 
with such piles and piles of food as you spread before 
us. You live too high. It is down-right intemper- 
ance, the kind the doctors have to preach against.” 

“ Why, that aren’t anything to brag on. Jest you 
take your supper up to Fawnystawk’s, and then you’ll 
see what the eating is.” She gave a little flattered 
laugh, having relished Loughborough’s censure of her 
abundance : it seemed a back-handed compliment. So 
he had to make himself plainer. 

“ Fawnystawk or no Fawnystawk, you’ll kill yourself 
before your time, Miss Sarah Jane, indeed you will, 
mixing six different kinds of preserve at a sitting.” 


88 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


He waved his hand again towards the gay little moulds 
scattered about the tea-table in such profusion. 

“One preserve, one jelly, one stew, and three but- 
ters,” corrected Miss Sarah Jane. “Why, there’s some 
folks as never cut a biscuit open without a spread of 
one kind or another ; but I’ve took your physics and 
the patent physics as I’ve sent to Winchester for, and 
I’m not shet of the neuralgy yet. You may talk 
about preserves and sech ? but I’ve got a pore appetite, 
Doctor Loughborough. There’s times and times as I 
don’t teteh so much as a morsel of bread that big.” 
She measured off a section of her hand with exulta- 
tion ; for she was proud of her well-stocked larder, 
but she was also proud of her “ pore appetite.” 

“ What good does it do to let food alone one day, 
then pay a visit, and live high the next ? Regularity 
is the secret of a healthy body, which is like any other 
machine. Come, Miss Sarah Jane, you are a sensible 
woman. Break your physic bottles, throw away that 
foul, fermenting stuff you call your preserves, and I’ll 
promise you a holiday from neuralgias and all aches 
and pains.” 

Loughborough spoke with rough good-humor, but 
Miss Sarah Jane shook her head obstinately. 

“It’s a poor showing when the doctors give over 
believing in their own physic,” threw in Miss Mary 
Jane Fontaine from the opposite side of the table. 

“ Madam, physic no more cures the sick man than 
whipping does the bad boy. Both are expedient some- 
times, but not often ; and it’s the honest doctor who’ll 
tell you so.” 

“ What is to cure the diseases, ef it’s not the physics 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


89 


as God Almighty lias laid away in the ground ?” asked 
Miss Sarah Jane, thinking she had the stronger side 
of the argument. 

“ Common sense,” was Loughborough’s laconic an- 
swer, folding up his napkin with elaborate care. 

“ Aren’t you robbing God of his glory when you 
talk that way ?” inquired Miss Mary Jane, the shadow 
of a rebuke upon her passive countenance. “ The Lord 
made us poor, weak, sick creatures,” she added, with 
piteous self-abasement. 

“Begging your pardon, the Lord didn’t do any 
thing of the kind. He isn’t such a bad workman,” 
was Loughborough’s retort. “If you are poor and 
weak and sick, it’s your own doing. The physic which 
Miss Sarah Jane talked of as being laid away in the 
ground, is hid, I’d have you ladies to know, so fast 
that we have hard work to find it ; and happy, I say, 
is he who never does find it. But I’ve made too long 
a lecture for such a kind hostess as you are, Miss Sarah 
Jane. Besides which it is growing dark, and it is high 
time we were getting along the road,” pushing back 
his chair. In this part of the country it was always 
the men who made the motion to start. 

If Loughborough was a bully, he was such a kindly, 
honest one that the country-siders did not mind being* 
bullied by him. He showed them his horns once in a 
while; but then “He’s so good-dispositioned,” they 
were wont to say, as if defending a favorite steer. It 
was one of Loughborough’s principles that the doctors 
and preachers, between them, ought to teach the people 
how to live ; but he did not receive much assistance 
from the preachers, for they and the farmers were 
8 * " 


90 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ignorant together. The curse of this region being the 
fatalism of the farmer and the superstition of the parson, 
Loughborough strove to fight the two-headed monster, 
but he often thought that he made no headway at all. 

McElroy leaned pensively against the honeysuckles 
of the front porch, feeling himself rebuffed. Vanessa 
sat down on the wooden step at his feet as meek as any 
spaniel, hoping that the spirit would move him to come 
and take a seat beside her. Miss Sarah Jane stood 
still for a few seconds to enjoy her unusual full dress. 
“The old girl is on a very heavy dike,” thought 
McElroy, measuring her from head to foot with a faint 
smile of amusement that acted as sauce piquante to his 
melancholy. The good lady wore black velvet bands 
upon her wrists, secured with buckles ; a pink bridle 
about her throat held attached to it a tiny silk camphor 
bag, which, in her mind, was an amulet to ward off 
diseases. Her hair was combed back from her fore- 
head so tightly that the strands had seceded from the 
union, and, standing apart, showed stripes of white 
scalp alternating with stripes of black hair; indeed^ 
there was so much regularity in this striping that one 
might have supposed the arrangement one of design. 
Her gown of Mozambique, pink and a little wiry, 
^ave her the air of. being very much dressed up. She 
had taken her place at the tea-table, fearful lest she 
should sit the back widths of this frock into wrinkles. 
This fear had soon evaporated, however, and now Miss 
Sarah Jane, who was secretly -wishing in her heart of 
hearts that Grat Fontaine could see her now as she 
looked in her treasured finery, darted off at last to the 
garden to make up a bouquet for this adored object. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


91 


It was the wane of a delicious summer twilight ; the 
earth inflated its lungs gently and sent out its breath 
again, a rich steaming fragrance; the air above the 
clove-pinks was heavy with spice. Diana stood on the 
further edge of the garden, listening to the whippoorwills 
that announced their names from a group of ash-trees 
as distinctly as any human bipeds could have done. 
As Loughborough approached her, he observed that 
there hung in the west clouds of pale lavender like 
Diana’s dress, and in the east clouds of a pale rose- 
tint like her cheeks; for when a young woman is 
by, men are apt to merge all space extension into her 
being. 

“ There has been a change in the driving pro- 
gramme, Miss Fontaine,” he said, coming up close to 
the young lady, who at his words started out of a 
revery. “ Hecuba is to go with Wesley in your aunt’s 
wagon. She has been promised, I believe, a visit to 
some kin-people in Pughtown for harvesting. Mc- 
Elroy will ride Patsy, for it is far too late for you to 
go horseback alone, so I have come to offer you a seat 
*in my buggy. May I have the honor of driving you, 
Miss Fontaine?” 

“ Yes, certainly ; thank you very much.” 

Diana’s quick assent was one of the marks of her* 
adaptability of nature, — this accessibleness being one 
of her charms ; for, like a wave of jhe sea, she took 
shape from the wind and color from the sky. 

“ But Patsy has the side-saddle on. Mr. McElroy 
cannot ride that,” demurred Diana. 

“ You never saw the saddle McElroy couldn’t ride, 
Miss Fontaine, nor the horse he couldn’t master, saddle 


92 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


or no saddle.” It was one of Loughborough’s prin- 
ciples to give the devil his due. 

The bath, the change of scene, the warmth of the 
long summer-day, the sudden approach of night that 
startles one in July, had, with cumulative force, 
plunged Diana into a condition of languor which 
Loughborough was not slow in perceiving. She was 
in no mood to contradict. “ You are tired, too. The 
ride home in the buggy will be a rest. Come, let us 
catch the remnant of twilight upon that rough hill- 
road before you get to the forks ; the moon will not be 
up until late to-night.” 

He led the way, she following, through a serpentine 
border, a dense mass of portulaca, now shut up. A 
turn through the quick-set hedge showed them the 
spring wagon preparing for departure. Hecuba sat in 
front by colored Wesley; Miss Mary Jane, at the 
back, was receiving from the hands of their hostess a 
pot of jam and a basket of cherries, which she pro- 
ceeded to stow away under the seat. 

“Well, I think in my heart,” she said, “you’ve got 
us pretty well loaded down now.” 

“Haven’t you room for the crullers? The lieu- 
tenant’s fond of crullers,” cried Miss Sarah Jane. 

Miss Mary Jane shook her head. 

“Well, here’s the bokay. I was mighty sorry as 
there weren’t more roses out; but tell Lieutenant 
Fontaine (she always gave him his war title) I’ll take 
it sadly to heart ef I don’t lay eyes on him at the 
Round-Hill bush meeting. Tell him, ef he’ll go, 
Miss Mary Jane, that I’ll make him the beautifullest 
chicken-pie ever he set tooth in.” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


93 


It was a habit of this good lady to send sweet- 
hearting messages to Grat. They certairdy did him no 
harm, as he never received them ; but they appeared to 
be a relief to Miss Sarah Jane’s heart. 

“ Here, V anessy, get in, child ; you’ll be lef ’ behind 
ef you don’t look out.” Miss Spangler was hoisted 
into the wagon by the gentlemen, a kind of woodeny 
despair making her muscles more inelastic than usual. 
Diana thought her very like a Dutch doll ; but this 
Dutch doll had a heart, and it was bleeding. 

“Look out for the bad place in the road as you 
come nigh the forks,” was Miss Sarah Jane’s parting 
admonition, and the spring-wagon drove off. 

Then came Launce Loughborough’s buggy. “Look 
out for that little girl as you have under your care, 
doctor. She’s the neatest little fix in Frederick. Just 
don’t you dump her out in that bad place this side the 
forks ; hear.” She thought it her duty to warn visitors 
of any pitfalls that might beset them on the way ; for 
this was old-fashioned hospitality. 

“ Never you fear, Miss Sarah Jane,” rejoined Lough- 
borough, taking his seat in the buggy beside Diana, 
and gathering up the reins. “ There isn’t a foot of the 
road lying betwixt your gate and Pughtown that I 
couldn’t go blindfold.” 

Diana was occupied with crushing her lavender 
muslin into its right place in the buggy, when a face 
bent towards her, and a voice soft with reproach, 
penitence, and appeal murmured in her ear, “Aren’t 
you going to say good-night, Miss Fontaine ?” 

“Oh, it is you, Captain McElroy. Good-night,” 
was the careless rejoinder. 


94 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Intense physical admiration from man disposes a 
woman to cruelty. With the ex-Confederate captain, 
Diana felt within her softness alternate with cruelty. 
She knew her beauties, with woman’s keenness, and she 
realized that McElroy knew them, too. His admira- 
tion was of the kind that exalts and humiliates by 
turns. The voice that said, “ Good-night, Captain 
McElroy,” was cool, repellingly cool. McElroy under- 
stood that he was not forgiven for the moment’s linger- 
ing at the pool ; but he enjoyed the transient disfavor ; 
it gave him something to do, some misery to enjoy and 
look helplessly handsome over. He raised his gaunt- 
leted hand to his head after the style of the military 
salute, and, with a deeply audible sigh, rode off on 
Patsy. He sat her side-saddle with careless ease, and 
Diana, catching the sad, patient smile as he passed her, 
felt her heart ache never so little. 

The horseman disappeared, the buggy followed the 
road-furrows, and Loughborough, who had watched 
the pantomime, albeit not seeming to do so, said, after a 
few minutes’ silence, — 

“Well, how do you like this country now?” 

“ Oh, lovely.” She felt too indolent, too absorbed, 
to seek a more discriminating epithet. A young lady’s 
adjective, and one not often sincere. 

“ You do not believe me ?” 

“ You look at nature through the eyes of others ; 
through literature, for instance.” 

“ Explain.” 

“You rave over a skylark because you have met 
one ; not in nature, but in a poem. You commend the 
patriotism of one of Scott’s heroes ; yet here, in your 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


95 


fatherland, you do not feel with those who have mixed 
their blood with dust for the great Cause ; and I think 
you would withhold your sympathy because many of 
the patriots you have met cannot parse. Is not this 
true? Well, that is what I call insincerity.” 

With Grat Fontaine one had to use tact; with Mc- 
Elroy, imagination ; with Loughborough, will-power. 
This was the quality he appealed to. Diana Fon- 
taine had plenty of the first two qualities, but not 
much of the last ; induction into it both surprised and 
fascinated her. 

“ Insincerity is a harsh word,” she objected, but with 
a touch of humility. 

“ Well, for example, what do you think of the 
people, now that you have seen more of them ?” 

“ That they are picturesque.” 

He shook his head. 

“ What is the matter with that adjective ? Surely, 
it is uncensurable.” 

“ It is artificial. You think of the people as pictures, 
not as human beings ; as contrasts to yourself, perhaps.” 

“Oh, Dr. Loughborough.” She was too horrified 
to say more. 

“Forgive me, if I hurt you, Miss Fontaine; but 
you know Fm a surgeon. Fm afraid I carry the knife 
in my disposition.” 

He leaned back in the buggy, allowed the reins to 
lie carelessly on his knee, and watched her face. That 
would tell him when to stop. He did not wish to go 
too far ; but, with a certain keen-sightedness that marks 
those who have the habit of looking outside themselves, 
he perceived dangers ahead, growing out of her own 


96 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


pleasure-loving, contrast-seeking, excitement-craving 
nature. 

“ Souls are alike. Do not find fault with the people 
so much as with their aspirations. They make a god 
of the body. If they worshipped a higher god, they 
would rise in proportion.” 

“ What is the higher god ?” 

“ The sensibilities. are higher than the senses; but 
they are still the body, Miss Fontaine. The range is 
higher, but not so much higher as you might think. 
Even refinement-worship is a dangerous creed.” 

“ Ah, Dr. Loughborough, you are what they call a 
leveller.” 

“ Only so far as it is a question of humanity. I am 
not afraid of the word, though I do not like it.” 

“ Do not hope to convert me. I am an aristocrat of 
the aristocrats in feeling. If I had lived in France 
during the Revolution, I should have died with the 
Bourbons ; if I had lived in England at the time of 
the Protectorate, I should have given my life for the 
Stuarts.” 

The emptiest ideas gain a certain dignity when they 
are illustrated by history. Loughborough gave one of 
his deep, kindly, indulgent laughs, as he said, — 

“ I should never have suspected you of being so old- 
fashioned, Miss Fontaine. Suppose you had lived two 
hundred years ago, when aristocracy was a vexed ques- 
tion, instead of now here in plain, democratic Virginia, 
why, we should never have met.” 

His eyes twinkled so pleasantly that Diana could 
not be provoked. She said, playfully, — 

“ You have been leading the conversation and driving 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


97 


the buggy, too ; come, give me the reins. I am going 
to have my way for a while.” 

Loughborough surrendered them at once. 

“ Have your way, by all means, in every way but one.” 

“ But ?” interrogated Diana. 

Loughborough’s countenance grew serious. He 
paused for an instant before replying, yet there was 
no hesitation in his manner when he spoke. 

“McElroy admires you, Miss Fontaine. Heaven 
knows I should not blame him for that ; but he is not 
the man you would ever think of except as the acquaint- 
ance for the hour, of course, and ” 

“ Why, of course ?” thought Diana. 

Loughborough had no wish to lift the veil from 
McElroy’s life. They had been comrades together, 
and were friends still. He decided to strike the chords 
of feeling in the young girl’s bosom by allusion to Miss 
Spangler. 

“ For two years Roy McElroy has been receiving 
favors from the Spanglers, for Vanessa’s sake, of 
course. He is under obligations to them of the most 
binding sort. In spite of this he has roused that girl’s 
jealousy horribly. I saw it to-night at the tea-table. 
Beware, how you rouse it further, else some day you 
might reproach yourself.” 

“ Reproach myself? What have I done?” 

“ Nothing, except to be fascinating. Restrain those 
fascinations for the sake of that poor girl whom I 
would have you think of as a suffering instead of a 
picturesque one ; unless you could be brought to think 
of McElroy at any time seriously, which, of course, 
you could not.” 

E g 


9 


98 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Why, of course ?” again thought Diana. And a 
vision of McElroy kneeling at her feet in cavalry boots, 
deep cuffs, wide collar, wavy light-brown hair, peaked 
beard, heavy-lidded eyes, low-murmured words, sug- 
gested to her imagination a man who had it in his 
power to give a woman passionate devotion, — pas- 
sionate and picturesque, like a hero of Bulwer, a 
Eugene Aram, a Pelham, and the like. The vision 
was so real that Diana bent forward unconsciously, and 
Loughborough translated her silence into resentment. 

“ Perhaps I am taking a liberty, Miss Fontaine, 
which you will think proper to rebuke. But I am a 
plain-spoken man, and I have never refrained from 
speech, when I thought that harm might grow out of 
silence, from any fear of etiquette.” 

The glance he bent upon her said, “ Be angry with 
me if you will : I am not afraid. I do not live or die 
by men’s anger.” She was not a girl to turn away 
from frankness of speech. 

“ Silence is sometimes a passive benefit, sometimes 
an active evil,” she murmured. 

“ Here it would be an active evil, believe me. You 
do not know, in your narrow woman’s experience, the 
class of man to which McElroy belongs. Your uncle 
is too occupied with himself and his grievances to warn 
you. Your aunt, kind soul, walks through life with 
her eyes buttoned up, thinking that sin consists in 
seeing sin. You cannot know the schooling which 
the past six years have given the soldier of fortune, 
which McElroy is. And, lastly, you, with your par- 
ticular disposition, could not possibly understand the 
laws that govern such natures as Vanessa Spangler’s.” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


99 


“ But would Captain McElroy dream of marrying 
such a girl as she ?” 

Diana was aghast. 

“You can never tell what a man’s dreams are. 
Sometimes he has nightmares, you know.” 

“ Yes ; but he is so handsome, so spirited, so clever ; 
while she ” 

“ Is a well-meaning young woman ; rich for this 
country; useful. All this is to counterbalance his 
attractions. Why, if McElroy married her, he wouldn’t 
have to do another stroke of work in his life.” 

“ What gain with such a woman for his wife ?” 

“ Conceptions of gain vary with the individual. I 
have seen men who used up their capability for honor 
and manliness during the war. I have seen men come 
out of this conflict, after fighting bravely, with every 
part of them sound — except the soul.” 

Diana recalled the hour on the knoll when Mc- 
Elroy had quoted the lines, — 

“ In the land where we were dreaming.” 

He, too, had alluded to nightmares ; and she remem- 
bered wishing to rouse him out of his. Did she still 
wish it ? She certainly had no thought of circumvent- 
ing Miss Spangler. Her brain was not the one for, 
stratagem; she was altogether the creature of moods 
and feelings. You could plunge her into despair by 
a couple of words, you could revive her with a look. 
She had the keen senses of a healthful animal; the 
quickness of the doe that hears a shadow. Just now, 
however, she only attended to that part of Lough- 
borough’s conversation which referred to McElroy; 


100 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


his words whetted desire. To mate with Vanessa 
Spangler ! It would be unnatural, — the union of the 
lark with the toad. She said as much. 

Loughborough shook his head thoughtfully. “A 
man may make many mistakes in this world, but* one 
he must not make, and that is treason.” Then, with a 
sudden change of subject, “ Lend me the reins, Miss 
Fontaine ; we have come to that bad place near 
Lowton’s Forks. There are several springs here which 
make the road swampy. It has grown quite dark ; 
but I think we shall have the moon on that last mile 
of the Pughtown pike ; then I’ll give you some fast 
travelling, if you like.” 

It was dark, the purple darkness of a summer-night 
sky that shows no stars. Pine-trees rose up on either 
side of them, making a line of solid black in the 
surrounding obscurity ; the buggy-wheels struggled 
through the marshy ground. There was a pleasant 
sense of security alternating with mystery. Lough- 
borough’s cheery voice encouraging the horse contrasted 
with the utter loneliness of the road. 

“ You must get dull, sometimes, at the Valley 
Farm,” he said, after an interval, during which the 
horse picked its way out of the mud, finding at last a 
good hard road ahead. It snorted with pleasure, 
tasted with delicate hoof the compact slate groundwork, 
and then went flying along. 

“ I want you to know Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk. You 
would like her ; young girls always do. Besides, she 
is connected with you by marriage,” he continued. 
“ She will call on you soon ; then she wants to have 
you visit her. You will go, won’t you?” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


101 


“I should like to,” was the not very significant 
reply. He is engaged to her, thought Diana. Is she 
another Vanessa Spangler? Why do these men make 
such unequal matches, as if there were no other women 
in the world saving those Hessians. Diana did not 
feel hospitable to kin with a Hessian strain. It was 
well that Loughborough could not see the disdain 
which sprang into her countenance as she leaned her 
head against the hood of the buggy ; but something 
made Loughborough say, a little proudly, — 

“ She is not only a good woman, but the handsomest 
in the county.” 

Diana pricked up her ears with woman’s eagerness 
to hear about other women. 

“ Is she dark or fair ?” 

“ Fair. General Rosser used to call her ‘ The Lily 
of the Valley/” 

“ Dr. Loughborough, do tell me something about 
Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk, won’t you ?” then said Diana. 


CHAPTER VI. 

On the first Wednesday of September, 186-, just 
past midnight, several taps on the porch pillars under- 
neath his bedroom window aroused ’Lias Fawnystawk 
from sleep. On the alert for surprises in those troub- 
lous war-times, he jumped out of bed, opened the> case- 
ment cautiously, and thrust his head out. The moon, 
just setting, threw a dubious light on a couple of 
9 * 


102 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Confederate soldiers, mounted and supporting another 
between them lying prone on his horse. 

“ Holloa !” said one of the horsemen, in a low, 
mysterious voice, as he caught sight of the old man ; 
“ here’s a dying or dead man, I don’t know which. 
Look to him, won’t you? We must hurry like the 
devil, or the Yankees will be on us.” 

“Is that you, Grat Fontaine? Well, I’ll be on 
hand in the cocking of a pistol.” 

Fawnystawk, having ascertained that his midnight 
guests were friends, drew in his head, and slipped into 
his clothes with a celerity only to be got by forty years 
of medical practice ; then seizing from the bureau a 
night-lamp, and lighting it as he went, he stepped out 
into the hall. 

At the stair-head, a young woman, candle in hand, 
awaited him anxiously. “ Father,” she half- whispered, 
and the hand that held the candle trembled ; “ they 
have been knocking against the porch with the hilt of 
their sabres. Do you think it could be the Yankee 
scouts ?” 

“Nuck, nuck, nuck,” growled the old gentleman, 
proceeding down the flight of wooden steps with 
alacrity. “ It’s Grat Fontaine and some of Ashby’s 
cavalry ; and there’s a wounded man you’ll have ’tend 
to, Lou-i-sy ; so get your fixings ready.” 

His hand was on the knob of the front door ; he 
slid the bolt, and threw it open wide. Dr. Fawny- 
stawk and his daughter stepped out upon the porch ; 
by the low, drooping moon, making more shadow than 
light oyer the landscape, they saw two horsemen leap 
to the ground, keeping their arms through their bridle- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


103 


reins, so as not to be parted an instant from their horses, 
the best friends a man can have when a regiment is on 
his track ; at the same time they lowered between them 
the stark figure of another man, whom they heaved to 
the floor of the porch, and then bounded swiftly back 
to their saddles, where they held a brief parley with 
the doctor in the same low, cautious tones. The young 
woman sank upon her knees beside the insensible sol- 
dier, absorbed with pity. 

“ We may pay for this by a bullet through the 
brains, ” was Fontaine’s muttered comment. 

“ Bullet or no bullet, this is a man whose life is 
worth saving,” his comrade replied. 

“ Hush ! Do you hear anything ?” whispered Fon- 
taine, in mysterious staccato. 

The three men listened ; you could have heard their 
hearts beat. Then Lou-i-sy rose from her knees, moved 
to the edge of the porch, bent her head, and gave that 
finer sensibility of a woman’s ear to the midnight air. 

“ I heard nothing,” said Fawnystawk. 

“ Yes, I hear a sound,” corrected Lou-i-sy, coming 
close to the group, and fixing large, awe-struck eyes 
on the two cavalrymen. “ It is far off, but it seems 
like a tramp.” 

“Now’s our chance, then,” said Grat Fontaine; “for, 
see, the moon has set.” 

“Jump the fence, cross the field, get into the woods 
by Smoke’s school -house,” admonished Fawnystawk in 
a stage-whisper ; but the two soldiers were already off, 
and very soon the stroke of horse-hoofs, muffled in sod, 
told the ear that they had cleared the fence and were 
galloping like mad on the course Fawnystawk had 


104 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


suggested, to join their battalion, a couple of miles 
below Winchester. 

“ They are out of danger this time,” muttered the phy- 
sician, turning his attention now to the wounded man. 
“ Give a hand, Lou-i-sy ; we must drag him into the hall.” 

Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk had a stout arm as well as a 
stout heart, and this was not the first time she had en- 
gaged in scenes like this. The women of the South 
who lived for five years on the “ Debatable Land,” 
bounded on one side by the Northern, on the other 
side by the Southern, pickets, knew what it was to 
confront death, anguish, pain, starvation, bloodshed. 
The demands made upon their courage and sympathy 
were ceaseless ; and, to their honor be it spoken, the 
demand was seldom made in vain. That was the gen- 
eration which engendered fortitude, the courage of 
woman. May their daughters and granddaughters not 
prove degenerate in the sublime virtues which are the 
honor of their sex. 

Lou-i-sy set herself to work, and with her father’s 
help dragged the soldier across the porch, over the 
threshold and into the hall-way. Then she ran and 
brought a couple of blankets, which the two succeeded 
in placing underneath him. Dr. Fawnystawk pressed 
his ear to the man’s heart, but shook his head as he 
muttered, “ That are a bad job.” 

They got his coat off ; then they turned him over on 
his face, and tore his shirt open down the middle of 
the back, for the ball had entered in at the breast, and 
it was lodged under a circular bluish spot between the 
shoulder-blades. With the flashing of that ball con- 
sciousness had gone, and life was a question. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


105 


Lou-i-sy, having brought forth her goodly store of 
bandages, held the burning tallow so as to throw its 
rays in the right direction for the eye of the surgeon, 
who was beginning to probe with the swiftness of a 
practised hand. 

“Here’s the ugly critter,” he said, after a few minutes 
of silent work, and from the broken flesh drew forth 
the Minie-ball and held it aloft dripping with blood. 
In the twinkling of an eye, while he held his arm 
high, it was made evident to father and daughter that 
the house was surrounded by armed men. It was as 
sudden as a Texan norther, and as chilling. 

Fawnystawk had scarcely time to let escape from 
betwixt his teeth the words, “ Banks and his divils,” 
when the front door was flung open and in burst a 
dozen or more blue-coats. They were in reality a rec- 
onnoitring party, and they were following the tracks 
of Fontaine and his fellow-at-arms. 

“ A rebel soldier !” cried the foremost man, while 
those who followed took up the word, ending it in a 
shout ; and immediately the squad gathered around the 
impromptu pallet whereon was stretched the wounded 
man, his face downward, his arms supine at his sides, 
his shirt gaping, his flesh between the shoulder-blades 
wrenched open, so as to disgorge the Minie-ball, which 
Dr. Fawnystawk still held aloft dripping with blood, his 
arm almost paralyzed by the suddenness of the surprise. 

“ Yes, gentlemen, a dead rebel ; if that will do you 
any good,” he said, after a moment’s deliberation, coolly 
laying down the Minie-ball and pulling up coat-sleeves, 
preparatory to washing his hands in the basin of water 
held for him by his daughter. 


106 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Dead rebel be damned ! They ain't worth much 
when they are alive," cried the head man of the party. 
“ But you see, old gentleman, where there is fowls of 
this kind so close, there's apt to be birds of the same 
feather a little further off, mayhap. I guess we'll have 
to look around a little and see what kind o' things you 
stow away in your cuddies ; isn't that what you call 
'em?" 

“ Cuddy-holes is the properest word for them things 
you are a-talkin' about; but any word will fit; just 
suit yourself," said Dr. TFawnystawk, who was not 
without his vein of facetiousness when it came to the 
worst. His sang-froid had served him in good stead 
many a time. 

“ The house is yours, gentlemen, make yourself at 
home. I never grudged a view of my up-stairs to any 
one. Lou-i-sy, here, keeps it proud and clean; but 
you'll excuse me from going along with you. I've 
been up there before, and I'm tired, too, 'cause I didn't 
get my sleep out to-night ; too much cump'ny around." 

Fawnystawk wiped his hands deliberately, took his 
seat in a horse-hair arm-chair which matched the sofa, 
and addressed the rest of his speech to the night-lamp, 
condemning the smoky flame it gave. 

His words were received with ha-ha's by the soldiers, 
who, in their hard lives, enjoyed a bit of fun now and 
then. They crowded out of the room ; took the stairs, 
some of them, at a few bounds ; while others of them 
dragged along behind, letting the points of their bayo- 
nets dent the wood-work as they mounted. 

They went cautiously at first, fearing some possible 
ambush. The next cuddy-hole might mean a sabre- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


107 


thrust or pistol-shot for its first explorer. The garret 
might hold, as in a fortalice, a troop of fierce South- 
rons instead of last winter’s store of nuts or last sum- 
mer’s gift of sage. No such stowaways being come 
upon, they gathered courage as they proceeded. From 
those chambers above stairs, wont to be the abode of 
peace, came the sound of tramp, tramp, tramp. The 
house seemed alive, the very walls shouted, the windows 
laughed, the floors grumbled, but in the midst of the 
din the Confederate soldier slept the sleep of uncon- 
sciousness, neither stirring nor breathing. 

Very soon the blue-coats trooped back, disappoint- 
ment darkening their features. 

“ Look here,” cried the captain ; “ you’ve been in 
league with this yere rebel.” He pointed to the 
wounded man. “’T aren’t worth while to say you 
wasn’t ; so’s we can’t find any one else, we’ll have to 
carry you off as prisoner.” 

“ And leave this young woman by her lone self, — 
neither man, woman, chick, nor child on the place?” 
asked Fawnystawk, his paternity touched. 

“ She’s got the soldier yonder to protect her,” inter- 
rupted the captain, with sarcastic emphasis. 

“ He’s better nor a dead man,” retorted Fawny- 
stawk. 

“ I don’t know what you mean by better nor a dead 
man ; but you’ve got to come along with us. The 
lady won’t be alone along. It’s all but daylight now ; 
and I see you’ve got neighbors round you.” 

“ Father, I ain’t afraid, ’deed I ain’t. I’ll get 
Cousin ’Becca Fawnystawk to stay with me. Don’t 
let any fear for me make you take the oath.” 


108 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


These last words were murmured in a whisper to 
her father; but they drew attention to the young 
woman who had stood so quietly by without speaking 
until the present moment. The violet silk kerchief 
enfolding her light wavy hair and knotted under her 
rounded chin shadowed a face of Madonna-like gentle- 
ness ; her gown, of homespun, was only noticeable 
because, being thrown on hastily without stays, it 
revealed more than she would have wished, of her 
luxuriant outline. 

An instant of silence followed, which Fawnystawk 
broke with the words, peevishly uttered, “ Don’t they 
know how to be purlite to the ladies up there in 
Yankee-land ?” 

“None of your Southern chivalry for us, if you 
please. It riles my blood to hear that devil-begotten 
word chivalry.” 

“I didn’t know but what it was you yourself as 
used that word firstest,” said Fawnystawk, slyly, 
noting with satisfaction that the daylight was strug- 
gling for admittance into the room through its half- 
closed blinds. “ I wouldn’t use it if I didn’t like it. 
Suit yourself ; don’t mind me.” 

“ What’s the use of devising any further, when you’ve 
got to go along with us as a prisoner. Will you go of 
your own accord, or shall we take you ?” 

“ I couldn’t think of givin’ you that much trouble, 
cap’n. Let me blow out the lamp first, — oil’s dear 
these days, — and kiss Lou-i-sy. Be a good girl, honey, 
and not o’er wasteful with the tallow.” 

“ Good-by, father. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, don’t 
take the oath.” The violet kerchief rested on ’Lias 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


109 


Fawnystawk’s shoulder, and the violet eyes stretched 
wide with entreaty as these words were murmured in 
his ear. 

While the conversation between father and daughter 
was going forward, a sergeant, with three stripes on 
his sleeves and two scars on his left cheek, was appro- 
priating a souvenir of the Confederate, who all agreed 
was too far gone to be taken along as a prisoner. This 
souvenir was a buckle, shield-shaped, and bearing 
Virginia’s coat-of-arms and the device, — “ Sic semper 
tyrannis,” fastened to a military scarf, and lying with 
other belongings upon the floor. He picked it up, 
gave an admiring look, then, unfastening it from the 
depending scarf, slipped the trinket into his pocket. 
It was a small affair, no theft ; for the soldier in war- 
times treats himself to whatever he likes and can make 
himself master of. He believes in the absolutism of 
physical power, in the despotism of office, and, reckless 
of life, his philosophy is a wild fatalism. The ser- 
geant, having tarried for a few minutes to execute this 
by-play, hastened now after the departing squad, who, 
with Fawnystawk in their midst, took abrupt leave, 
leaving Lou-i-sy alone, at the break of a chill Sep- 
tember morning, with a dying or dead man, she knew 
not which. 

The gray-eyed dawn looked through shutters at a 
blue-eyed sister standing in the dusky hall-way, pale, 
anxious, startled ; for an instant despair seized her ; 
she turned, first, cold, then numb, and feared that she 
might faint. She looked down at the man lying prone 
on his breast upon the blankets, and realized that she 
was his sole dependence now. Touching one hand 
10 


110 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


with the other to see if they had feeling in them, she 
thrust, with one huge effort, self from her mind, for 
activity is a better nervine than ammonia. Then she 
kneeled down upon the floor and tried to turn him 
over upon his back. This was a severe task for a 
woman’s unaided arms ; but she succeeded at last, and 
her reward was to find that he lived beyond a doubt; 
that his breath was returning, though with a catch in 
it. She dressed the red gash in his breast, and then 
set herself to work to make the house tidy. 

At noon, Cousin ’Becca Fawnystawk came over from 
the other side of Brandy Hill to “ keep cump’ny with 
Lou-i-sy,” as she said. 

For three days the wounded man languished upon 
the shores of eternity ; but good nursing can do much, 
and a sound constitution, more. Was it not Hercules 
who wrestled with Death and snatched Alcestis from 
his clasp ? 

On the third day Lou-i-sy had her patient moved to. 
the best bedroom upstairs. Life, color, speech, came 
back to him there, lying betwixt rose-scented linen 
sheets, and under a home-made quilt gorgeous enough 
to cheer the most morbid fancy. 

One afternoon he watched the sunbeams dropping 
their golden ovoids on the rag carpet, Lou-i-sy sitting 
in a low chair where the dimity curtains parted in front 
of the west window. Her lap was full of gray yarn, 
as she was heeling a pair of socks. The sun shot glit- 
tering fasces on the wood-work of the window-casing 
behind her. They made a pretty nimbus for a woman’s 
head. The invalid let go the golden ovoids and sur- 
veyed the lady with his dreamy, questioning gaze. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Ill 


His attitude was one of patience, but his feelings 
were otherwise ; they chafed at enforced quiescence. 

“ You always speak of me as ‘ he’ and ‘ him,’ Miss 
Fawnystawk. You ought to know by name the man 
who owes to you his life. I am Launce Loughborough, 
of Ashby’s Brigade.” 

“ I knew you were of Ashby’s Brigade,” answered 
the knitter, going to the fireplace and laying a bunch 
of fagots on the bright-faced dogs, for the air had a 
keen bite. 

A sigh came from the pillow, and a voice said, “ It 
will be months before I can join my regiment. I am 
a doctor, and I know that. Meanwhile the Yankees 
are centring about Winchester. It is hard to lie quiet 
here, and Jackson sweeping up the Valley.” 

Miss Fawnystawk nodded ; there was nothing for 
her to say : she was a woman of action, not words. 

“ As soon as possible, I must be moved into Southern 

lines ; for if the Yankees should find me here, they 

But they cannot take me prisoner while I have my 
good pistol underneath my pillow.” 

“ Lieutenant Fontaine and Captain McElroy loped 
up as far as the vineyard, yesternight, to find out 
whether you could be moved as yet. I told them, 
no.” 

“Not quite yet,” returned the sick man, with no 
querulousness in his voice, but self-controlled patience. 
“ When I die, it shall be on a field of battle, and not 
on a feather-bed. I shall not cheat the brigade of a 
soldier.” 

A moment later he said, “ Have mercy on me, and 
read something aloud, Miss Fawnystawk. I must get 


112 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


out of myself, out of Virginia, out of the century. 
Won’t you help me to take such a leap ?” 

Miss Fawnystawk looked as if she would have 
helped him willingly to mount to the stars, had she 
known how. 

At his answer, “ Read what you like,” she hesitated. 
Books had always been to her a task, not a solace. 
Sausages, quilts, preserves, and flowers had been the 
vents of her over-charged feelings. She went out of 
the room, however, returning almost immediately with 
a large volume, from which she began to read with a 
kind of solemn dignity. This volume was the family 
Bible, and her selection was the fiftieth Psalm, her 
mother’s favorite in that lady’s last illness. 

The listener turned uneasily ; presently he cried out, 
“ Not that, please ; it makes me feel as if I were lying 
in my coffin, and some one was reading the funeral 
service over me.” 

Lou-i-sy stopped reading at once, but she looked 
puzzled ; she had felt the Bible to be the most proper 
mental occupation for an invalid. She remembered 
vividly reading a chapter every day from that blessed 
book to her mother when fastened to the paralytic’s 
couch. 

“Have you a novel?” Loughborough asked, a 
gleam of hope breaking upon his thin features. 

“Yes.” 

She remembered a copy of Beulah in the bookcase, 
which her heart would have chosen from the very first, 
had she dared to force upon her patient a literary taste 
she was by no means sure of. She brought it now and 
began again. Loughborough tried not to listen ; if he 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


113 


could but go to sleep and become unconscious of the 
diabolical twaddle she was pronouncing with a scrupu- 
lousness of care of itself provoking. In vain. His 
mind became painfully lucid and fastened itself upon 
every exaggerated simile and false position which char- 
acterized the tale. Fastening his deep-set gray eyes 
upon Lou-i-sy sitting in front of the dimity curtains, the 
nimbus at the back of her head, he said, with a kind 
of mirthful tolerance, u You have a right to think me 
hard to please as well as basely ungrateful, and you so 
kind ; but, upon my word, I cannot stand that book.” 

“ Y ou aren’t hard to please,” she answered, gently ; 
“ but I don’t know as we’ve anything else ’cept’n’ the 
medical books.” 

Loughborough laughed outright. “ Medical books 
are more in my line ; but I would not let you punish 
me, so I will certainly not let myself punish you. 
Look in the bookcase once more, and let me know the 
names of what you have. I am on your hands for 
two or three weeks more, Miss Fawny stawk. We must 
make the time profitable.” 

Of course, Miss Fawnystawk obeyed orders. When 
she returned for the third time to Loughborough’s bed- 
side, it was with an armful of dusty calfskin tomes ; 
most of them old school-books or works on surveying, 
— the shabby genteels of a library, rustic, entirely con- 
servative, and unsubjected to change. 

Loughborough looked the books over languidly, 
then selecting one, he said, “ Milton seems the most 
promising. How would you like to read that?” 

Lou-i-sy had never heard of Milton, but she was 
agreeable, of course ; so into Milton they plunged. 
h 10* 


114 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


At first, Miss Fawnystawk felt a little shocked at 
encountering such names as Adam and Eve, familiar 
to her only on the sacred page, but a sacrilege else- 
where. After a while, however, she became accustomed 
to this, and she thought them very nice sort of people. 
Lucifer and Pandemonium made her open her eyes 
wide. She was sorry for the devils, and threw the 
mantle of unquestioning charity over every personage 
in the epic, from Ithuriel down. The part in which 
she took most delight was Eden and its flowers, which 
brought her home-bred imagination to her own garden. 

Loughborough smiled at her uncensuring, girlish 
acceptance of everything. For his part, he thought 
Adam a priggish fellow, a didactic sort of Cambridge 
professor without clothes; Eve, a paper-doll woman 
cut out by measure to suit a husband’s theories ; the 
angels, proctors, unburdened with the official gown, spy- 
ing upon the felicity of the wedded pair, — the whole a 
university turned loose in a garden, whose very flowers 
were the cold mosaic work of art rather than the 
growth of sap and living tissues. Had Diana been 
reader, she would have patted John Milton on the 
back with the light touch of a nineteenth-century hand. 
She would have said, “ He is lovely to have a bronze 
bust of for your library table; or he would make a 
dignified presence on the top-shelf of your best book- 
case; or would not L’ Allegro and II Penseroso be 
charming companion studies in marble for the parlor 
mantel?” She would have prattled by the hour, saying, 
“ A few lines in Comus are nice to learn by heart ; but 
Adam costs me a laugh, silly Eve a frown, and the 
angels a long, protracted yawn.” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


115 


But Diana was not reader ; she was not here with 
her blending of strength and weakness, which made 
her fascinating to some, but exasperating to others; 
more so than if she had been consistently weak through- 
out. 

Milton was interrupted several times before he was 
finished. The Garden of Eden was invaded by a 
band of scouts from Milroy’s Division. With a glance 
at the man lying helpless against his pillows, and the 
words, “He ain’t worth the parole,” the scouts de- 
parted, leaving the invalid to the gentler sway of Eve 
and the milder atmosphere of Eden. 

The country grew more and more unsettled, for 
Milroy’s iron heel pressed hard upon the Valley ; so it 
was important to get Loughborough, as he grew into 
the stage of convalescence, out of the way of the 
Yankee troopers. 

On a dark night, therefore, towards November, he 
was lifted by his comrades, Fontaine and McElroy, into 
an ambulance brought for the purpose to the edge of 
the wood, placed upon a bed made carefully by Lou-i-sy 
upon the floor of the wagon, and jolted over rocky 
back-roads to a farm-house some dozen miles away, 
within the space marked by Southern picket-lines. 
Here he would be safe from proffers of the oath of 
allegiance and from Northern prisons until such time 
as he should be ready to join his ranks again. 

Dr. Fawny stawk’s imprisonment had been of short 
duration. The oath had been offered and had been 
declined by him; so he was thrown into the “Old 
Capitol” at Washington to await trial. In the course 
of a few weeks he was tried as a suspicious character, 


116 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


hiding Confederate soldiers about his house ; but on ac- 
count of lack of evidence and witnesses, he was finally 
discharged. It was a winter made up of excitement 
alternating with intervals of dulness. There were no 
servants about the place ; Lou-i-sy had to drag from 
the Devil’s-Hollow, a beautiful bit of woodland in sight 
of the house, tree branches to supply the fire that 
cooked her father’s dinner or that warmed his reflective 
legs, as he sat in the dining-room hearth-place, his 
chair tilted, his feet lifted to the heights of the mantel- 
shelf. He had the Hessians’ belief in the manly pre- 
rogative, and never did a stroke of work that could 
be avoided. 

One afternoon, at the close of February, he looked 
on in comfortable indolence as Lou-i-sy, uncomplaining, 
uncriticising, brought into the room a basketful of 
sticks and laid them on the dogs. “ She’s a good girl,” 
he meditated over a newspaper, read and re-read, and 
three weeks old, a gift bestowed by the captain of a 
Yankee foraging party who had passed that way ; “ she’s 
a good girl, Lou-i-sy is. I do’ent regret as she ain’t 
ever married yet. There’s the fifth commandment, 
and it’s the most important, ’case it’s the first one as 
goes with a promise. Happen somebody ’ll come along, 
one of these days, and take us, house and all together. 
When a man has worked night and day nigh onto forty 
years, he has bought his rest, and paid for it, too. 
Why, one-half of these youngsters that have gone 
from hereabouts into the army of Northern Virginia, 
why, I brought them into the world myself with these 
•two hands.” Thus singing to himself hymns of praise, 
he cocked his feet a bit higher on the mantel-shelf, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 117 

fastened his shrewd eyes on his newspaper, and began 
re-reading it for the fourth time. 

Hard labor had certainly not disagreed with Lou-i-sy. 
She was the picture of health and neatness when she 
sat down a moment later, beside the deal-table, and 
began work with hands wonderfully fair-looking, con- 
sidering all the labor they achieved. When doing 
work not a woman’s, her father was wont to say, in his 
complacent way, “Never mind the dirt nor the cinders, 
honey; black hands make bright money. That was 
always my motto and my father’s aforetime.” Lou-i-sy’s 
present occupation, however, was of the womanly kind, 
not offensive to her somewhat dainty tastes. She had 
on her knee a flap of Yankee tent canvas ; this, having 
been previously soaked and bleached, she was pro- 
ceeding to ravel out. The stout thread, wound into 
balls, would in the course of time be knitted up into 
socks for her father and stockings for herself. Thus 
did the tents of the invader become a treasure to the 
needy Southron. 

Lou-i-sy’s eyes travelled occasionally to the pearl- 
white cloud that, stretching across the heavens from 
pole to pole, diffused a milky light through the green 
geraniums banked in the windows, and gave a promise 
of snow. 

Like Penelope, in the ancient tale, whether weaving 
or unravelling, Lou-i-sy’s thoughts were often wan- 
derers. Her Odysseus, where was he? But for all 
the wandering of thought or glance, her hands travelled 
none the less swiftly and continuously. Wandering 
thoughts return, wandering eyes fly back ; the latch is 
lifted, the door is opened, and in steps Odysseus, — in 


118 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


other words, Launce Loughborough. He comes up 
to his blue-eyed nurse, takes a seat at her side in the 
straight-back, gray-painted wooden chair, and says, — 

“How do you do and good-by,” in one breath. 
“ Miss Fawnystawk, congratulate me. I go back to- 
morrow morning to my regiment.” 

“To-morrow!” Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk was never 
quick in taking ideas. She dropped her tent canvas, 
and her hands lay idle among the threads while she pe- 
rused Loughborough’s face anxiously. He was still very 
pale, and his breadth of chest was the more emphasized 
by its hollowness. His deep-set eyes held a triumphant 
brilliancy, the soldier’s heart having leaped into them. 

“ Yes, to-morrow.” He glanced around the room ; 
so quiet had been his entrance, so quiet Lou-i-sy’s 
greeting, that Dr. Fawnystawk did not arouse from the 
nap into which he had fallen. Can you blame him ? 
The fourth reading of a newspaper already three weeks 
old is not conducive to mental vivacity. 

“ I am come to take leave of you, kind friend, to 
whom I owe so much.” 

Loughborough was not given to the making of 
pretty speeches, even those of gratitude ; but the smile 
which accompanied his words had in it something in- 
effable, like the pronouncing of a benediction. 

“ And we won’t see you, perhaps, ever again ?” 

There was a little quaver in Lou-i-sy’s interrupted 
staccato ; but Loughborough, not being on the watch, 
did not perceive it. 

“ Why not ?” He shrugged his shoulders carelessly ; 
then he added, “ No, we are too good friends not to 
meet somewhere.” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


119 


“When all is over, you will not come here; you 
will go back to your family?” Lou-i-sy’s question 
was accompanied with the downward sweep of white 
lids which gave an air of intense resignation to her 
countenance. 

He shook his head soberly. “Family? I have 
none. Cousins, yes ; but what are they ? The home- 
stead was burned to the grass after Manassas; my 
mother died from the shock ; my brother fell on the 
field, — that was .all of us.” 

“Will you forget us, here? You may be leaving 
us for good, you know ?” 

The voice quavered a little more ; this time it at- 
tracted Loughborough’s attention. He saw that the 
red roses of Miss Fawny stawk’s cheek were turned 
into white ones. 

“Forget you ! Impossible while I live. If I should 
stay forever on the battle-field, as so many brave boys 
have done before me, why, I ” 

He stopped speaking all at once : Miss Fawnystawk 
was weeping. 

“Dear young lady,” he asked, in an awed under- 
tone, “ are those tears for me ?” 

She made no effort to restrain them now. She was 
as honest in her grief as she was in her tranquil joys. 
She knew not the dignity of the mask. Her nature, 
incomplex, was direct in word, in look, in act. With 
child-like simplicity she raised her handkerchief to 
her eyes and sought to wipe away the drops ; straight- 
way others began to flow. It was a sisterhood of 
mourners not to be parted easily. 

As soon as she could find her voice, she said, 


120 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


brokenly, “ Suppose you should be wounded, and I 
not there to nurse you.” 

She could not achieve the thought of separation ; the 
effort made but the climax to her trouble. She leaned 
her head upon the edge of the deal-table and allowed 
her tears to flow forth in unvexed freedom. Lough- 
borough, distressed, laid his hand upon her head. The 
soldier within him was hiding behind the man, and the 
man had a tear in his eye. 

With a sudden snort, Dr. Fawnystawk woke up and 
looked around him. Surely, here was a change in his 
domestic drama, — Lou-i-sy the steadfast, the equable, 
not at work, but in tears ; Loughborough bending over 
her, with hand upon her head. The old doctor was 
not long in piecing thoughts together. He went back 
to his old fancy, “ Happen somebody ’ll come along, 
one of these days, and take us, house and all together 
so his voice called out from the chimney-corner with a 
cheery sharpness in it, for the old Hessian was wont to 
look on the comfortable side of life, — 

“ Lou-i-sy crying? Hold on, child, and save the 
salt ; the war aren’t going to last long. I haven’t 
been a-working nigh on to forty years without know- 
ing what I’m a-talking about. Just you ride after 
Jeb Stuart hard as you can, Dr. Loughborough. Whip 
the Yankees ; come back, and I’ll give you my Lou- 
i-sy. She knows how to cook the victuals for the best 
man a-living, that she do. There isn’t a doctor on this 
circuit without’n it’s me. Come back to us when the 
war is over, take my practice, and my house and my 
young ’oman. I’m getting old; it’s time for my 
Sabbath to be a-coming.” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


121 


Loughborough could hardly refrain from smiling at 
this proposal, made though it was in singleness of 
heart. He thought of Fawnystawk and himself asso- 
ciated in medical practice as of a horse and an ox 
yoked. 

He looked at Lou-i-sy. Her head was uplifted. 
When the war is over. She seized the thought and 
hugged it. Her father’s words had opened up a vista. 
Her countenance was bathed in a soft, empurpled light. 
Love and desire sat in her eyes. She expressed her 
tenderness as frankly as she had done her grief. 

“ When the war is over, you will come back to us, 
won’t you ?” 

Loughborough’s cheek caught some of the glow 
from hers as he answered, with solemnity, — 

“ If it is your wish, Lou-i-sy, I will. I owe you 
my life ; from this time forward it is yours. If the 
South win, I will come back to lay my share of her 
glory at your feet. If — if — the Confederacy goes up, 
if the Cause is lost, I will still come back and lay my 
share of her affliction at your feet, also.” 

Lou-i-sy smiled through tears. She did not want 
courage for anything short of separation ; her belief 
went with her hopes that her knight would win. 

“ Good-by,” he said, and pressed her fingers in his 
thin, muscular hand. “ Good-by,” then he bowed his 
head and touched her lips with his. 

In the saddle the soldier rushed back to Lough- 
borough’s feelings. In the din of battle, Lou-i-sy 
seemed an episode, a dream rather than a reality ; but 
to Lou-i-sy, Loughborough was the transcendent 
reality of life, that which brought the blood in sweeps 


122 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


to brow and cheek, or made her turn faint and white 
as she waited, watched, listened for tidings from the 
field of battle. 


CHAPTER VII. 

In August, Diana went on a visit to the Fawny- 
stawks. Loughborough, at Lou-i-sy’s request, drove 
Miss Fontaine thither in his buggy. The road twisted 
in white loops through as winsome a country as ever 
God set His touch upon. Surely the Creator was in a 
playful mood when He moulded those slopes and set 
to dimpling those vales which make the frame-work 
of many a farmstead inhabited by the thrifty Hessian 
or by the gentler-bred Virginian. The hills whistled 
forth their joy in sibilant grasses, or sent it skyward 
by means of whispering leaves ; the creeks lay in their 
beds, the sheet of water over them, and piped their 
gladness, through reeds, in rounds and runs and 
quavers. The Blue Ridge stood against the horizon in 
a sharpness of color, like mineral paints. It was the 
blue of Dresden china. 

The country around Cloverdale laughed more than 
that about the Valley Farm. The soil here was 
lovable and it was beloved. The farm-house was like 
many that you see in the Valley, — square, of mellow red 
brick, with green outside shutters, and a portico, white 
and vine-shaded, in front. A public-road swept past 
the front gate, so that you could say “ Good-morning !” 
to the neighbors as they went back and forth betwixt 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


123 


Winchester on the south and Brandy Hill on the 
north side of Cloverdale. Wheat-fields and pasture- 
lands, like squares in a quilt, made alternate blockings 
of green and gold. A gentle swell of hill-side at the 
back of the house took the eye with its regular boss- 
work of grape-vines, planted in rows and trained upon 
stakes like those of the Rheingau ; while the neighbor- 
ing hollow showed the tuft-like tree-tops of the apple 
orchard. A herd of cows wound in through the farm- 
yard gate as Loughborough’s buggy stopped in front 
of the house. Diana’s nostrils distended to take in the 
delicious blending of midsummer scents, as she cried 
out, “ What incense ! It is a poem of Herrick or of 
Marlow expressed in smell.” 

Miss Fawny stawk came quickly down the walk, 
which was merely a break in the grassy rectangle upon 
which the house stood, and Loughborough sprang out 
of the buggy to greet her. Beside his ruggedness, how 
gentle, how feminine she looked. She was in the 
blossoming prime; but her twenty-seven years had 
diminished none of the cream and roses of a com- 
plexion which seemed to be taking hints from the 
flower-beds. It was this wholesomeness of tint which 
made the old ladies of the neighborhood say, “ Lou- 
i-sy’s skin, it looks good enough to eat.” Her eyes, 
with a violet warmth of hue in them, were a little 
blank, perhaps, but they had the power of looking 
kindly ; her light hair was coiled in the back, a plait 
having been reserved for the coronal that stood high 
upon her head, adding length to the face, which other- 
wise might have been criticised as a trifle dumpy. The 
over-rondure of her figure gave a hint that the peace 


124 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


and plenty which surrounded her might, one day, stow 
away another chin under the already rounded one, and 
place a too heavy padding of flesh about her joints. 
Just now, however, much riding on horseback, much 
standing on her feet, much presiding over hog-killings, 
apple-butter boilings, harvesting, wine-making, and 
dairy-tending, kept the abundanee of flesh within the 
restraints of a compact figure, set off, this evening, by 
a gown of blue homespun, ornamented with devices in 
crimson braid of the lady’s own dyeing. 

An instant only is needed for the quick-eyed woman 
to take in details of color and contour, and Diana, bred 
upon art-galleries, had this facility and the habit of 
suiting symbol to sentiment. Her imagination decided 
in favor of Miss Fawnystawk before she was out of 
the buggy. 

“ Dear heart, you must be tired,” said Miss Fawny- 
stawk, and she greeted her visitor with a cordial kiss. 
“ Come in ; you’ll have a bit of time for resting before 
supper-time.” 

Loughborough drove off with the buggy to -the barn- 
yard, and the two ladies stepped into the pathway that 
led to the house. Miss Fawnystawk was not able to 
pass the garden-gate, however, without looking in, for 
the garden was her pride : it was a couple of acres 
separated by a paling from the grass-plots of the house- 
place. She chatted pleasantly about her luck with 
cam-e-lias, chiny-asters, and dale-ias ; stooped to pluck 
a sprig from the border of citronalis, which she spelled, 
in her mind, citron-Alice. 

She might well be proud of her garden, for it was 
a rich mass of flowers intermingled with vegetables, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


125 


all living together in joyous profusion. The pea-vines 
made a pretty lattice, through which you might spy 
huge melons tumbled about on the patch, waiting for 
somebody to gather and eat them. A group of rose- 
trees, in unrestrained, hoydendish bloom, tossed them- 
selves against a belt of beautiful feathery asparagus, 
recognizing that the lace-like foliage made a becoming 
veil for their vivid complexions. The grapes that 
climbed the espalier in the centre of the garden were 
beginning to exchange the sallow green of unripeness 
for the glow of maturity. There were no angles in the 
landscape ; Round Hill, facing Cloverdale to the west, 
the most ambitious mountain hereabouts, showed on 
an enlarged pattern .Miss Fawnystawk’s own contour. 
The apple-trees in the orchard, on the other side of the 
paling, touched each other with their branches, like 
burgomasters’ wives hoop-skirted for a pageant and 
jostling one another in the crowd. 

“ This is my room. Come in and take your things 
off,” proposed Miss Fawnystawk, introducing her guest 
into a large square bedroom on the right of the double 
hall as you entered from the front porch; for in the 
Virginia mansion, whether it be in the Valley, the 
Piedmont, or the Tidewater, “the madam’s chaahm- 
ber” is always on the first floor. 

Diana, left to herself, sat down to rest a few minutes. 
This, then, was the abode of Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk, 
Loughborough’s betrothed. 

The house showed the order of some middle-age 
priory. Miss Fawnystawk represented another class 
differentiation than that to which Vanessa Spangler 
belonged. They were both of Hessian descent, but 
11 * 


126 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the Fawnystawks were of a better neighborhood, as 
well as of better stock. Lou-i-sy had kept house for 
her father since the age of thirteen, at which time her 
mother fell a victim to paralysis. A life of outward 
activity had calmed her spirit and deepened her nature ; 
yet she must have been born serene, to have diffused 
about her that light of peace in which her friends 
basked. Her accomplishments were of the useful sort. 
She could tell every part of a hog, and what it was 
good for ; she could direct a man how to cut up a beef. 
It took time for Lou-i-sy to get an idea ; but with her 
a thing once learned could never be unlearned. She 
was not without accomplishments of the ornamental 
sort, having received a year’s schooling at a girls’ 
seminary in Winchester ; but the studies pursued there 
had puzzled rather than enlightened her. What would 
the ologies , strongly diluted by the ignorance of a pro- 
vincial teacher, do for a country-girl whose mind had 
previously been occupied with hams and pumpkin-pies 
instead of text-books ? But she took wonderfully to 
the lessons given in wax-work, feather jewelry, leather- 
flower making, and the pettifoggeries of art. She also 
took lessons in music, and could do a little tinkling on 
a piano which her father had indulged her in after a 
very flush wheat-crop. But the catalogue of Miss 
Fawnystawk’s accomplishments are hardly worth a 
clause, though to her simple mind they meant much. 

Diana took off her hat, as she was bidden to do, and 
then sallied forth into the hall. The parlor-door stood 
wide open ; she hesitated for an instant on its threshold. 
Like the other rooms of the farm-house, it was a large 
square, lighted by four windows. A faint odor of 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


127 


desuetude tickled the young lady’s sensitive nostrils as 
she paused to read Lou-i-sy’s traditions illustrated by 
the best room of Cloverdale. 

The chairs were a little too well upholstered, and 
they stood about stiffly, oppressed by the restraint of 
company manners. A horse-hair sofa, sleek and black, 
between the two west windows, tried hard to assume 
an air of careless ease ; but failed utterly, in spite of 
the flossy yellow rug in front, and the tidy pinned upon 
its back, like the chemisette on a lady’s bosom. A 
table standing upon the central figure of the sober- 
patterned carpet was covered with shells from the 
Pacific coast. How they got washed up to the emi- 
nence of Apple-Pie Ridge, it would be hard to say; 
but certain it is, that Miss Fawnystawk dusted these 
brightly-colored conchs, without omitting a day (if 
we except that year at school), since the age of thirteen. 
Some of the fruits of this lady’s own handiwork were 
scattered about. There was a bracket over the mantel- 
piece decorated with leather grapes ; there were roses 
in wax under glass, as painfully regular in their per- 
fection as a set of artificial teeth ; there was a plate of 
strawberries, cherries, and peaches, also in wax; but 
they kept themselves carefully in the darkest corner 
of the room, as if they knew that at this season they 
could ill stand the challenge of bed and orchard with- 
out. The whole was surveyed from the wall by a 
procession of Confederate generals, photographed and 
framed in carved walnut, — Breckenridge, Beauregard, 
Jackson, Lee. How dwarfed by the miserable art 
which, instead of elevating, belittles ! What a mimicry 
of worth ! To Lou-i-sy’s eyes, however, they were 


128 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the Southern chiefs, and that was enough. Had not 
their names been, momently upon her lips during 
those thrilling years of the war which had brought 
her a lover • soon, now, to become a husband ? 

The looking-glass, which hung over the mantel, 
imaged Loughborough coming up behind her, and 
Diana, after a moment’s pause, cried, “ Ah, a piano !” 
and shot into the room. She laid her cheek, in the 
ecstasy of her enthusiasm, against the maroon flannel 
cloth which guarded its precious veneered surface. 
“ After a separation of months, Dr. Loughborough, one 
can be pardoned for being silly.” 

“Play something,” he said, and raised the lid. 
Diana sat down and ran the scale. Her finger-tips 
saluted each key ; she smiled delight. 

“ Not bad. What will you have ? Something sad 

or gay or ?” Her question ended in a little burst 

of melody from the key-board, after which, “ Do you 
like Chopin? Ah, I think his mazurkas the essence 
of the romantic mood.” 

Her words melted into a mazurka, snatched from 
the instrument in a whirl of chords, half weird, half 
sweet. 

“ Do you like Schumann ? He is dreamy, not im- 
passioned.' I prefer the two together. You know one 
must have courage to confess to being sentimental. I 
am sentimental. Listen ! Isn’t this delicious ? Schu- 
mann’s ‘ Nouvelle,’ two voices. This is the man’s ; by 
and by you will hear the woman’s. It chimes in like 
— like — here it is ; listen.” 

Diana’s running commentary upon that most charming 
of dialogues in music ceased, that she might surrender 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


129 


herself to the inspiration of Weber. Her rapid changes 
from one composer to another revealed the girl in her ; 
but her music was no mere girl’s music. If it lacked 
experience and maturity, it still had another quality, 
which puzzled Loughborough as he leaned his elbow 
on the instrument and rested his chin in his hand. 
She transported while she played : the music was a suc- 
cession of waves from the great sea of Harmony, in 
which she seemed not so much to swim as to float. 
While playing, Diana touched the invisible. 

“ Sometimes I say that music is my art.” Her 
hands idled with stray chords. “Then I remember 
that I do not care for the best. Beethoven is a sealed 
book as yet. Then I want to adopt sculpture or 
painting as my vocation. Painting is poetic ; sculpture, 
heroic. Is it not bad, Dr. Loughborough, not to know 
what you want to do with yourself ; not to know what 
you are worth in the world ?” She let her hands slide 
heavily into her lap. 

“ Feeling comes first, knowing afterward,” was 
Loughborough’s answer. “You cannot reverse the 
rule, Miss Fontaine. Chopin has feminine qualities ; 
he is the woman’s artist. When you get above the 
sex-line, you will rise to Beethoven.” 

In his heart of hearts Loughborough would not 
have had the young girl transcend the sex-line for a 
good deal. She was infinitely more charming as she 
was. He was a progressive fellow, for his time ; but 
he did not wish to see woman wholly emancipated. 
He took up a flute which lay on the piano and touched 
its stops. 

“ Do you play ?” cried Diana. 


130 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Not as you do. I came to the conclusion, some 
time ago, that a man who attacks his work with the 
fury of the wild beast is in danger of becoming a one- 
idea-ed monster. Such a man is a detestable Cyclops. 
I am fond of music. I took up the flute to keep myself 
from becoming a utilitarian : its home is here by Miss 
Fawnystawk’s request, but it goes with me on many a 
long tramp. It is a part of my professional advice 
that every man should have some absorbing pursuit, 
and one other.” 

Diana’s eyes dilated with interest. “ Let us play 
together,” she cried ; “ I will accompany you by ear.” 
But Lou-i-sy came in now to tell them that tea was 
ready. At the tea-table Diana met the other members 
of the family whom she had not yet seen. There 
were only two others, Dr. Fawnystawk and Cousin 
’Becca. 

The doctor had been toasted by nature to a crisp, 
but his shrewd little eyes travelled over the young 
stranger with pleasurable attention. He thought her 
arms capable of doing a good day’s work, if she had a 
mind to. Cousin ’Becca Fawnystawk was a fine figure 
of a woman, past sixty, who played the part of peda- 
gogue in the “ Burnt School-house” on the far edge of 
Brandy Hill. This lady had gone over the Ridge to 
pay a visit about the time when she and the century 
were in their teens, and she came back after a year or 
so with a newly imported pronunciation, very strange 
to the Hessian ear. It was all very well in eastern 
Virginia to do as the eastern Virginians did, but to 
come back to the Valley, “ making her a’s as broad as 
a furriner’s,” appeared to these good folks an unpar- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


131 


donable eccentricity. Conceive of your own flesh and 
blood thaahnking you for the butter, shaking hahnds 
with you, and showing you fahncy stitches. Such 
exaggerations as these had sorely tried Miss ’Becca 
Fawny stawk’s relations for many years. Her voice, 
too, was in grotesque contrast to. her size, — it was the 
body of a grenadier with the heart of a mouse. She 
had a dainty way of clipping her syllables, calling her 
friend Miss Fontaine, the elder, Ma’ Jane, and Miss 
Jackson, Sa’ Jane. She was one of the women who 
pity themselves; her conversation ran into tales of 
heart-rending woe concerning herself ; but to the woes 
of others she turned an ear of marble. 

Miss Fawnystawk’s tea-table was more ambitious in 
the way of elegance than Miss Sarah Jane Jackson’s. 
Its wood- work was mahogany polished with “ elbow- 
grease,” as Dr. Fawnystawk said. The white mats 
strewed about its shining surface gave the effect of 
snow on dark-brown soil, and there was no crowding 
of dishes. What a pretty meal is a farm-house supper, 
coming, as it does, at “ early candle-lighting,” to crown 
the day’s activity. 

While conversation was going forward, Lou-i-sy, 
toward the end of the meal, arose from her seat, and, 
with the carving-knife, sliced, longitudinally, the huge 
watermelons that could hardly stay quiet, for rolling, 
on the side-table. The click of ripe meat under the 
pressure of the carving-knife gave forth a pleasant 
sound, an announcement soon to be realized by the 
delicate straw tints and luscious pulp of the halves as 
they burst apart from each other. A half-melon, with 
a spoon, was set before each guest, and Lou-i-sy beamed 


132 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


her affectionate glances upon melon and melon-eater, 
as if she rejoiced to see good things eaten by good 
folks. Hers was not the hospitality that opens the 
door and shuts the countenance. 

At Diana’s exclamation over the beauty of buff- 
colored melons and tomatoes, she returned with more 
vivacity than was her wont, “ It is queer how keen the 
stuff is to grow in our garden ; the beds ’ll do anything 
you ask them to. We’ve black and white currants in 
the season as well as red ; we’ve white mulberries as 
well as black. Some folks prefer the low-colored 
fruits and say there’s a finer flavor to them ; but give 
me the red when it comes to preserving.” 

“ Lou-i-sy’s that keen after preserving, she’d pre- 
serve the fingers off her hands ef she wuzn’t afraid 
she’d stick to something as is dirty.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk enjoyed the laugh at his daugh- 
ter’s expense ; yet he was proud of her thrift, asserting 
that she took after him in this, and that “ a wild goose 
never lays a tame egg.” 

“ Before and after supper-talk differs,” was his 
daughter’s shrewd retort. “Who’d be the first to 
grumble, I’d like to know, if there weren’t three kinds 
of butters on the table of an evening : the doctor here 
knows which of us has the sweet tooth in this family.” 
A blue beam was shed upon him by Loughborough’s 
betrothed. 

a An ox should not be on the jury at a goose’s trial,” 
was Loughborough’s rather downright answer to the 
blue-eyed appeal. “ Your father and I are not of the 
same way of thinking, Miss Lou-i-sy ; he’s for feast- 
ing, and I’m for fasting. That a man has two ears, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


133 


and two eyes, and one mouth is proof to me that he 
was intended by his Maker to do less of eating than 
of aught else ; especially when you reflect that the 
mouth has the double duty to perform of speaking as 
well as of eating. 

After a suitable amount of pooh-poohing of this 
from Dr. Fawnystawk, they all, with the exception of 
Miss ’Becca, repaired to the porch, flooded now with a 
moon just risen. 

“ Music, Dr. Loughborough ; your flute, please. 
You and the honeysuckles must have a duet ; the tree- 
frogs and katydids shall be the chorus.” 

The flute was brought. Loughborough, standing in 
the pathway, made of it an obedient servant : it brought 
forth at his command plantation melodies, Don Pas- 
quale’s Summer Night, and a snatch from the Zauber- 
flote. 

Dr. Fawnystawk went to sleep and Lou-i-sy dozed 
in her rocking-chair. The moon, well above the 
horizon line, made her its own. A silver chrism was 
upon the coronal of her fair hair, iridescence upon her 
face and bosom, while the hands clasped in her lap 
wore fairy gauntlets of silver. 

The same moon which adopted Miss Fawnystawk, 
mocked at Diana ; made love to her through the spray- 
showers of the honeysuckle that climbed the porch 
lattice, and then leaped groundward again. It startled 
you with a glimpse of her eyes charged with responses 
to the music ; then it cheated you of a whole half of 
her that rested in shadow ; her gown was plaited over 
with the shadow- tracery of vines. It was the very 
coquetry of moonlight, and Diana herself was half 
12 


134 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


witch, half illusion. Lou-i-sy was the placid statue 
of a Saxon Bertha, the moonbeams, flax threads. 
D?ana, all hints and hidden meanings, gave forth no 
suggestion of industry, but only a delicious wild unrest. 

Dr. Fawnystawk, roused from slumber upon his 
hard bench, denied that he had been asleep, but thought 
he would go to his chamber* “ Early to bed, early to 
rise,” he said ; then, “ he that will thrive must rise at 
five ; only he that hath thriven may lie till seven.” 

Lou-i-sy roused, too, and, with a yawn that melted 
into a moonlit smile, confirmed her father’s words with 
others of the same family, “go to bed with the lamb, 
and rise with the lark.” 

“It is too late for the lamb; we will not go to bed 
like sheep,” interrupted Diana. “ I want more moon- 
light, more music, more of this summer night. I have 
not had half, half enough.” 

She threw out her arms to embrace that beautiful 
summer night which was treading the vales and 
smiling on the Round Hill opposite like a gold-haired, 
passionate-eyed Juliet. In an instant, her arms, bared 
by the loose sleeves falling back, were turned to ivory. 
Loughborough could not help wondering if they would 
answer warm to the touch. He rebuked his lips for 
the test which they inclined to make, and turned away 
that he might not witness their tempting eloquence. 
How true it is that the mind pervades every inch of 
the body, and is not caged up within the limit of a 
brain, as some have thought. 

Dr. Fawnystawk’s bedroom candle was caught sight 
of at the vanishing point in the hall. Lou-i-sy now 
appeared on the threshold of the front door, candle in 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


135 


hand. Bed was the watchword, and Diana was forced 
to yield. She must leave that moon to the Bound Hill, 
to the orchards of Cloverdale, to the lanes of the Devil's 
Hollow, to the road flashing white on the top of Brandy 
Hill, and betake herself to four walls and a plaster 
ceiling. Standing on the top porch-step, she bade 
adieu to the night, half whispering, for her consolation, 
“ Well, we will have the morning, anyway. Night is 
for lovers, but the morning is for the muses." 


CHAPTEB VIII. 

The nation that teaches its youth to be proud of 
their past need never despair of their future. The old 
regime , set in its groove by a simply-bred, gently- 
mannered agricultural people, did not pass away all at 
once. Its doom was sounded by the cannon of Man- 
assas and Gettysburg; its death-warrant sealed by 
veterans' tears at Appomattox, but its life had been 
too hot to perish on the mere signing of a treaty : 
though wounded, it lingered on; for reconstruction 
was a gradual affair. The chivalry which it fostered 
has been with many a synonyme for fantasticalness and 
sentimentality. 

Here is not a place, however, for defining words; 
the novel deals with atmospheres,* the spirit of an 
epoch ; and, in the days of which we write, chivalry 
was a word of honor in the South ; the literature upon 
which its youth had been fed, — Scott, his prose 
and verse. The Scottish Homer gave to them (the 


136 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Southrons) the names of their estates, as well as 
models for both men and maidens, — Kenilworths, 
Woodstock s, Melroses, Monkbarns, Newsteads threw 
the glamour of romance upon the landscape. In every 
gentleman’s library the Waverley novels stood first and 
foremost ; on every gentlewoman’s tongue sprang coup- 
lets from Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, or the Lay. 
Old men quoted them in Congress or in the legislature ; 
young men rode to the tournament under such titles as 
Knight of Ivanhoe, of Red-Gauntlet, of Waverley. 
Indeed, many a Virginian’s knowledge of literature was 
bounded by the covers of his Scott, and he might have 
done worse ; nay, he does worse who, in this day of 
rampant journalism, limits his literature to the coarse 
pages of a Herald. 

Throughout the Valley and Piedmont, Virginia, there 
existed at this time a picturesque and local sport called 
“The Tournament.” The display of horsemanship 
on these occasions was superb. Here was a training- 
school which turned out finer cavalry-officers than 
West Point. It was the fable of the Centaur come true 
in our own century ; and it must be remembered that 
this sport was unique, for we have never heard of the 
tournament in any other part of the world since medi- 
aeval times. Truth and horseback-riding was the 
motto of the Persian, and it made him a conqueror ; it 
was the motto of Scott, that Homer of knighthood ; 
and it was the watohword of the young Virginia of 
this century. 

Diana’s bosom was foolishly tender to chivalry, but 
her brain was confused about the definition of the 
word, — one which has played the knave’s part in many 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


137 


a would-be wise man’s philosophy. Her mind was a 
museum of requisites ; to wit, a pair of cavalry-boots 
and riding gauntlets, a plumed hat, a daring arm, a 
charming smile, a bent knee to a lady’s foot, a mur- 
mured compliment iu her ear ; and it is to be feared 
she would not have recognized the knight without 
these marks. To her eye, McElroy fulfilled the re- 
quirements of chivalry : he had the boots and gaunt- 
lets, the plumed hat, the charming smile, the daring 
arm, the bent knee, — all ; and yet what lacked ? Some- 
thing, even she was aware of that. Had Loughbor- 
ough been asked for a definition, he would have said, 
“ The knight is he whose heart warms to his dog, his 
menial, his general, his beloved.” The horse may 
have made of man a gentleman ; but the Persian was 
right when he added Truth as another and the chief 
source of manly honor. McElroy was but a sham 
knight, with a foot ready to trample upon his mother’s 
bosom, if need were to achieve his desires. His was a 
weakly, affectional nature, loving to grovel in the slush 
of sentimentality, and finding these moral mud-baths 
soul-soothing ; while under his graceful garrulity there 
was a shocking lack of reason. Diana had heard 
Southern chivalry much sneered at by her Newport 
friends. “ The name is a cloak,” said they, “ which the 
wealthy slave-owner throws over his own licentious 
passions.” 

“ Oh, there is a tendency, of course, for some virtues 
to become antiquated,” said a Harvard graduate whom 
Diana had once found interesting. “ Chivalry is one 
of these, I do assure you, Miss Fontaine.” “ Then 
ours is the loss.” Diana had spoken up quickly, cling- 
12 * 


138 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ing to romance. u Upon honor, Miss Fontaine,” ad- 
jured the collegian, “ don’t you know that chivalry 
was an institution which kept your sex a thousand 
years behind the age?” You should have seen Diana 
roll her eyes, curl her lips, and bridle at the implication ; 
but she did it becomingly, so the young light of 
Harvard deigned to shine upon the scornful girl, just 
as the great luminary shines upon the unjust as well 
as the just. No, she was at the height of the age 
of romanticism; she teemed with its virtues and its 
follies. 

One Sunday afternoon, sitting on the Fawnystawk’s 
piazza, she heard with delight the following announce- 
ment made by Loughborough : 

“ There is to be a tournament at Ribbell’s Spring 
this week. It was planned this morning at the Burnt 
Chapel. The boys from Apple-Pie Ridge will ride, 
and some of the fellows from Clarke and Winchester. 
It will be the first tournament since the war ; but the 
men are in training, and you will have a chance to see 
some good riding, Miss Fontaine.” 

“ A tournament ? Charming. I am wild to see you 
ride, Captain McElroy. Dr. Loughborough says that 
when you are mounted, you and the horse are one.’* 

“ Don’t forget your uncle,” said Lou-i-sy. 

“ Yes, it would be hard to beat him,” agreed Lough- 
borough. “Grat is a cyclone on hoofs; but you, 
McElroy, have the truer lance.” 

“ My hand is not as steady as it used to be.” 

McElroy lifted his plump white hand, that they 
might see it tremble against the green honeysuckle 
leaves climbing about the piazza. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


139 


“You will ride, too ?” asked Lou- i-sy, turning, in 
swift pride, toward her betrothed. 

Loughborough nodded. “ Yes, and one of us two 
must crown Miss Fontaine queen of love and beauty, 
as this is to be her first tournament.” 

Lou-i-sy showed pleasure at this proposition. Both 
McElroy and Loughborough were fine riders. She 
awarded the palm to the last, and rejoiced in the 
prospect of his triumph ; besides which, she had been 
crowned several times; why should not Diana have 
her chance? Miss Fawnystawk was a happy woman ; 
she wished that all others of her sex could be so, too. 
Diana’s countenance at this moment argued no small 
degree of happiness. A smile winged across it and 
lit each feature with taper-touch ; her whole face swam 
in light. She was generous with her feelings. Lough- 
borough and McElroy warmed, — a woman’s enthusi- 
asm carries inspiration. 

“It lies between its,” cried Loughborough. “Grat 
will not crown his niece, of course. He must ride, 
but not in the contest. I think I can fix that all 
right.” 

“ I must borrow a horse,” thought McElroy, and he 
reviewed the Spangler stock, always at his disposition. 
He shook his head ; there was one horse, and but one, 
in the Pughtown neighborhood worthy to prop his 
knightly legs, and that one belonged to Algy Swartz. 
If Algy should ride ; but no. Algy was in love with 
Miss Spangler. A word from McElroy, and that lady 
would bespeak the horse for the man she adored. 
Algy would agree to stay at home or go as spectator. 
He rode like a Conestoga, anyway. Miss Spangler 


140 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


would transfer the horse to McElroy, and behold him 
mounted for conquest. The chain of thought flashed 
through his brain in a twinkling; if there was one 
thing on earth that he loved passionately, it was riding. 
He swung himself into the saddle, spurred his horse’s 
flank, and took the ring on the spot, to the words and 
tune of the “ Cavalier’s Glee 

“ Spur on, spur on. We love the bounding 
Of barbs that bear us to the fray ; 

The charge our bugles now are sounding, 

And our bold Stuart leads the way.’’ 

Diana’s heart trotted in time to the glorious song, 
for it must be remembered that she was made of in- 
flammable stuff. She was in the spirit of the joust 
when McElroy said, — 

“ If we are to ride for you, you must dub us knights. 
How shall we be called ?” 

And she answered : 

“Fair beard and a singer. You must be Sieur 
Nesle de Blondel ?” 

Miss Fontaine’s eyes dwelt approvingly upon the 
fair hair and the fair beard, and she strove to echo a 
line of the “ Cavalier’s Glee.” 

“The heralds will never pronounce it. We have 
never had him for a knight, Miss Fontaine.” 

“ They must be trained.” 

“We must get a college-fellow, then. I don’t want 
to be murdered by a marshal.” 

He hummed again, picking to pieces a honeysuckle. 
He was never so busy as when doing nothing, this 
indolent, amorous, engaging fellow. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


141 


“ Come, tighten your girths and slacken your rein; 

Come, buckle your blanket and holster again ; 

Try the click of your trigger and balance your blade, 

For he must ride sure who goes riding a raid.” 

Diana felt, while listening to the raider’s song, 
hummed to the tune of “ Bonny Dundee,” as if she 
would give anything on earth to have lived South in 
war-times. The rebel woman stood suddenly glorified 
to her imagination. She believed that she was by 
nature a rebel, but strongly diluted with the aesthetic 
sense. 

“ McElroy has Jeb Stuart’s trick ; he trolls snatches 
of song in the cannon’s mouth. What is to be my 
name, Miss Fontaine ?” 

Diana made a show of reflection ; then looking up, 
smilingly, she said, — 

“ Lion-Heart.” 

“ What ! and be surpassed by a singer and a sub- 
ject? In the saddle, McElroy is king; change the 
names.” 

Diana laughed at the word “ change,” for Lough- 
borough would make but a grotesque Blondel. She 
shook her head. 

“The name suits. Doctors must have the eagle’s 
eye, the lion’s heart, and the lady’s hand.” 

Loughborough bowed to the praise implied. Miss 
Fontaine made such pretty pictures with her words, 
her conversation was the mosaic of Florence, the sub- 
ject often classical. 

Lou-i-sy interrupted the talk with a tray of juicy 
summer apples. The ennui of how many a rainy Sab- 
bath has been spiced into pleasure for the rustic V alley 


142 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


farmer by means of his transcendent apple ! How 
often daring the snows of winter has he beguiled the 
do-nothing seventh day with a pippin, a rambo, or a 
gorgeous bell-flower. A long, weary look at the clouds, 
— then an apple ; a glance over a stale newspaper, — 
then another apple ; a hand-warming in front of the 
fire, yawns, and a nap, after which another apple. A 
neighbor drops in, in spite of mud, — more apples ; and 
so has many a dreary Sabbath been passed over by the 
unliterary Hessian. It may have been that, in the 
monotony of Eden, the apple came to Adam and Eve 
as a relief. It was not so, however, with Lou-i-sy ? s 
tray of summer-apples ; they came not to relieve, but 
to crown a conversation that had brightened eyes and 
sharpened tongues. 

The day of the tournament arrived ; it was the 
bridal of earth and heaven, for one seemed to be the 
lovely complement of the other. The dust might have 
been criticised, for the cavalcade, winding through the 
valley tournamentward, kicked up a flying cloud of it. 
Diana, loping forward on horseback, led the van, — 
McElroy at one side, Loughborough occasionally at 
the other. Lou-i-sy followed in the buggy with Cousin 
’Becca and the boxes containing the gowns which the 
two ladies were to wear at the coronation ball. Out- 
riders dashed up at the cross-roads to join the proces- 
sion. Behind these came the spring- wagon containing 
the Pursle girls, three full-blown flowers, named in 
honor of the three States, Georgia, Florida, and Vir- 
ginia, but called familiarly, Puss, Phode, and Pidge. 
Diana made the mistake, in an unlucky moment, of 
calling the last Fudge. They were driven by their 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


143 


father, — lame Henry Pnrsle, as he was called, — a 
hunchback man, wedged in among packages of gro- 
tesque shape, containing decorations, no doubt, for his 
girls to wear at the ball that night. 

Diana, riding ahead, with an eye on every bush, 
admired the golden-rod that yellowed the dark-brown 
ridges. Loughborough, who happened to be near, dis- 
mounted, and brought her a spray. She let it wave 
like a plume on her breast. 

“ It is too flashy,” objected McElroy ; “ you should 
wear nothing but lilies, Miss Fontaine.” 

Loughborough demurred. “ Why cut the acquaint- 
ance of all but lilies ? This bit of golden-rod reflects 
every whit it can of God’s glory ; it deserves praise.” 

Loughborough was the apostle of hopefulness ; he 
rarely relished abuse. He was sometimes angry, but 
he never sneered ; he thought that the devil’s charac- 
teristic, and said something to this effect, adding, — 

“ God is everywhere : if every place does not reflect 
His glory, it is the place’s fault, not His.” 

“ Such a place is — hell ?” asked Diana, quickly fall- 
ing into Loughborough’s vein. 

“ Can a man be in hell and yet see heaven near ?” 
murmured a languishing voice in Diana’s ear. She 
looked up and met a pair of deliciously dreamy eyes, — 
McElroy’s. 

Loughborough jerked his bridle-rein impatiently, 
turned the animal’s head clear around, and galloped 
back to the buggy which held his betrothed. The 
falsetto jarred his moral sensibilities. 

“ When the thread of a man’s life has gotten into a 
snarl, what shall he do, Miss Fontaine ?” pursued the 


- 144 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


pleading voice of McElroy, who now placed his hand 
on the pommel of his companion’s saddle, so that they 
could lope in unison, shoulder to shoulder and flank to 
flank. Diana was at the age when a woman cannot 
refrain from giving advice ; for within the cloister of 
her heart the virgin always dreams of becoming some 
man’s patron saint. Alas ! the saint is not always wise. 

She did not reach her idea through logical processes : 
“ the chill draught of logic would freeze the poor 
creatures out of life,” was a saying of hers ; so they 
sprang from her brain in full stature and full equip- 
ment, like Athene from the head of Zeus. Just now 
she fhought of Ariadne holding the clew for Theseus, 
but dared not speak the thought ; it might entail con- 
sequences. But to the question, repeated with love- 
haunting eyes, — 

“ When the thread of life is in a tangle, Miss Fon- 
taine, what must a fellow do ?” 

She answered finally, “ Cut the knot, if it cannot be 
untied.” 

“ Where find the shears to cut such knots? Caji 
you imagine a fellow hopelessly caught in a tangle 
which ” 

“ Which, if he has made, he can unmake.” 

McElroy shook his head in the depths of gloom ; 
offers of relief to the fascinating fatalist were unavail- 
ing. She pursued : 

u The Hero — ideal for all men — cut the reins that 
bound his chariot and checked its progress, so that he 
might ride on to conquest.” 

Conquest ! Will not the word thrill any man’s soul, 
even the recreant knight’s ? 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


145 


“ Conquest ! Do you encourage me to seek it ?” 

“ Self-conquest,” was the reply, in the midst of a 
blush. 

The spectacle which McElroy enjoyed most was red 
in a woman’s cheek, sprung there at his bidding. He 
had brought the rose, could he bring the lily, too, with- 
out going farther than he dared? He was a queer 
mingling of passion and prudence. He had often 
talked love with women, marriage never; for there 
was a bar-sinister in his quarterings which thrust aside 
his claim to the fair estate of matrimony unless, unless 
Miss Spangler would take him, and thank you, bar- 
sinister and all. But Diana? He looked at her 
sitting in her saddle, elegant, erect, spirited, longing to 
try her power ; just now in the tender mood, — for love 
is an instinct. Yet, though this is so, is it not strange 
that knowledge concerning the right person to be loved 
is not instinct, too ? Is there any question upon earth 
about which man and woman are more fatally mis- 
guided ? Diana’s eyes sought hedge and ditch ; a 
word, and McElroy might have winged them both to 
his ; for she was in the impressionable stage, imagina- 
tion more alive than heart. But he refrained. With 
this girl he dared not name love without its sequel — 
marriage. He knew that, charming as she was, she 
was as poor as the beggar-maid, for Ned Fontaine had 
died penniless, while he was no Cophetua. To his 
mind marriage was a state of comfort, or it was nothing. 
While floating in this sea of indecision, he murmured 
something vague in his tuneful minor key and this 
chance was gone, for the hotel of Ribbell’s Spring 
loomed up before them over a noble sweep of green turf, 
o k 13 


146 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


A double line of willows cut off the edge of this 
park-like expanse, and the two horses, scenting their 
journey’s end, swept up the avenue to the horse-block 
in the cleanest of lopes. McElroy reached it with 
Lorena on his lips, and Diana with the softest echoes 
of it in her heart. 

It was the middle of the afternoon when the tourna- 
ment began. A wall of irregular rocks, breaking into 
glens fringed with deciduous trees and tasselled with 
the dark-hued evergreen, looked down upon a grassy 
circle, whereon field-marshals and heralds were curvet- 
ing about, on the alert to keep order when the signal 
should be given. The hotel-piazza, on one side of the 
lists, was crowded with the gay parasols and after- 
noon toilettes of summer visitors. Diana’s party were 
ranged upon the opposite side, a dark stripe of buggies, 
carriages, wagons against the noble line of beech-trees, 
which behind them caught the sunlight, and then shed 
it upon the turf a brilliant network. In and out of 
this network pranced the roan steeds carrying the 
heralds, — one moment equestrian statues of bronze, 
ablaze with the splendor of a summer afternoon, the 
next, young men on capering bay horses, lifting hats 
first to this lady then to that, catching sight of friends 
in the variegated throng. 

Lou-i-sy sat in her buggy, almost too closely veiled, 
perhaps by her woman’s modesty ; but Diana, at her 
side, was a creature of restless excitement. Her eyes 
were blazing torchlights in the dark of an agitated 
countenance. The scene to most was mock-heroic ; but 
to her wholly heroic. She had come to it through 
contending emotions; the thud of the horses’ hoofs 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


147 


upon the sod of the lists aroused an answering heart- 
throb. 

“ Yonder is Miss Spangler — look, Dianny,” whis- 
pered Miss Fawnystawk, “sitting in the spring- wagon 
over there with the Pursle girls ; and I think in my 
heart if yonder isn’t Miss Sarah Jane Jackson. How- 
ever did she get all the way here from the Red Lands ?” 

But Diana had no eyes for either Miss Spangler or 
Miss Jackson, her eyes being consecrated at present to 
the feats of horsemen. “ Listen ! they are beginning,” 
she said, as the penetrating note of a bugle called the 
people to silence, the hills about them to reverberation. 
Then a herald, riding forward into the middle of the 
lists, called the roll of the knights ; each name was an 
epic or a romance in a single word, as the Knight of 
Ravenswood, of Ivanhoe, of the Lion-Heart, Nesle 
de Blondel, and a score of others were rung out by the 
sharp-voiced young herald. After which an address 
by Judge Lutterworth, one of the summer visitors, 
from a wooden stand under the lee of the hotel, stating 
the rules of the tilt ; the duties of the contestants ; the 
heroic custom of the tourney in Virginia ; the influence 
of woman; allusions to Scott; quotations from the 
poetry of valor ; ending with the line that has helped 
so many men to pay the right compliment at the right 
time, “and store of ladies whose bright eyes rain in- 
fluence and judge the prize.” A speech is a mince-pie 
that catches everything, — sweets and spice and spirits, 
as well as more solid meat chopped into bits. J udge 
Lutterworth’s showed a wide and varied reading. He 
provoked both laugh and cheer ; he laid hand on heart, 
then waved it over his head, and exhibited the practice 


148 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


gained by after-dinner toast and stump oratory. The 
politician in him strove to be poet, and the two 
wrestled ; but the politician came off victorious. There 
was a waving of kerchiefs and clapping of hands from 
the piazza. 

Diana tore off her Roman scarf and waved it 
superbly. The spring-wagon holding the Pursle girls 
and Miss Spangler was aburst with giggles. Very 
differently do people take tlieir joys. The Ribbell’s 
Spring’s band played the opening bars of Lorena, 
Diana’s lips moving in unison ; the knights trooped 
away to the edge of the woods which concealed them. 
The bugle sounded, and the Knight of the Lion-Heart 
was seen emerging from the tree-boughs at the farther 
end of the lists, and bounding forward towards the 
wooden pillars. He bore away the ring upon the end 
of his lance, six feet in length. 

What need to describe a tournament. It is already 
the spoiled darling of literature. Enough to say that 
Sieur Nesle de Blondel was the victorious tilter, having 
tossed the ring seven times on the point of his lance. 
What horsemanship ! Diana half-rose in her carriage. 
After taking the ring for the seventh time, his horse 
flew the other half of the pircle with its rider, Mc- 
Elroy, along his flank, so that on one side the horse 
looked riderless. The animal still at the top of his 
speed, the supple equestrian slipped low along the 
belly of his steed, then, without changing gait, back 
again he sprung into his saddle. “ Oh’s ! all’s !” were 
breathed into the air. There was too much surprise 
at this succession of feats to allow of clapping at 
first. McElroy had succeeded in calling the lily to 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


149 


Miss Fontaine’s cheek. She sat pale with her intensity 
of feeling ; her hand clasped upon her heart ; the 
Roman scarf with which she had been idling a few 
minutes before on the ground beside the buggy-wheel. 
The next instant recorded the transition of silence into 
a shout. All eyes were fixed on McElroy. He sat 
still on his charger, pure black, not a white hair from 
mane to tail ; he himself slim, small- waisted, fair ; the 
hand that held the bridle-rein delicate as a woman’s ; 
his plumed hat, black as a Stygian shadow, rested on 
his loose, longish, light hair. An orange scarf en- 
girdled his loins, the noose being relaxed by exercise. 
He swept his eye around the enclosure, recovering his 
breath deliberately, and allowing his horse to do the 
same. His glance came to a pause upon Diana. She 
was distant from him a hundred yards, but his eye 
brightened on the gray riding-habit, the eager throat, 
the golden rod which gleamed upon her breast. He 
leaned over his horse, patted him, as if to ascertain 
that he was good for another run, then, with a touch 
of the spurs, they started at a pace like the wind ; and 
close to the buggy, without slackening speed, he picked 
from the ground Miss Fontaine’s scarf of rainbow 
hues, caracoled back in a series of pretty whirls, and 
gave it into the young lady’s hand with as gallant a 
bend of the head as ever man gave. In Diana’s 
bosom such enthusiasm burned as in Flora McDonald 
when she made of Prince Charley a hero. McElroy’s 
triumph ended in the whispered words, “ You are the 
queen of love and beauty,” drowned by shouts. ' 

A fresh knight rode up in the costume of an Indian 
chief, painted, feathered, and announced as Hiawatha. 

13 * 


150 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


He rode a colt without saddle or bridle, and, uttering 
a fierce war-cry, passed like a flash along the line, 
lifted the ring from its rest, continued on at full speed 
to the verge of the enclosure, where he bounded over 
the stone wall and disappeared. By the rule of the 
tourney none but a Christian knight was permitted to 
lay his crown at the feet of the queen of love and 
beauty ; the Indian, therefore, was no rival, but only 
a free-lance, a humorous and skilful masquerader. 
Diana’s eyelashes sparkled with moisture; the horse- 
manship stirred her. McElroy laughed. He thought 
she looked like. a carriage-horse herself, and the simile 
showed no lack of admiration or respect. 

“ Do you not recognize that Indian ?” 

“ No ; how should I ?” 

“ Try. Is there no answering blood in your veins.” 

“ What ! Do you mean my Uncle Grattan ?” 

“ Who but he ? They call him the crack rider of 
the county.” 

“ You ?” Diana demurred. 

“I? My school of riding was not the Valley, but 
Eastern Virginia.” 

“ Are they so different V 

“ The people are the same, but their traditions are 
different; very.” McElroy was looking straight at 
Miss Spangler as he said this. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


151 


CHAPTER IX. 

At the coronation ball the ladies were resplendent, 
being, as the country-siders expressed it, “ on a very 
heavy dike.” Large assemblages, however, rarely 
show human nature to advantage, for men and women 
are far better set off by trees and rocks than by each 
other. The ball-room at RibbelFs Spring, that even- 
ing, showed a grotesque mingling of rustics and metro- 
politans. There were farmers dancing in top-boots 
and spurs ; there were young fellows from the cities, 
skipping about airily, in patent-leather pumps, to the 
u Beautiful Blue Danube,” played by the band in- 
trenched upon a dais at one end of the hall. In rural 
districts, religious sensibility is often looked upon as 
being woman’s exclusive property ; and in the Pugh- 
town neighborhood most of the men announced them- 
selves as belonging to what they called the “ Big 
Church,” with any amount of latitude in its gift; 
while most of the women were Methodists of the 
strictest sort, or Hard-shell Baptists of the closest kind, 
not daring to acknowledge their souls as their own 
property. For this reason neither Miss Fawnystawk 
nor Miss Spangler indulged in the frivolities of dancing, 
though they found great pleasure in looking on at the 
wickedly rhythmical exercise. 

Miss Sarah Jane Jackson was a waif, having been 
fought over by the Methodists and Hard-shells for a 
period of twenty years, but not captured by either. 
That she had never been converted, was the wonder of 


152 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


her friends, seeing that she had been to so many 
funerals. Upright she sat now against the wall, her 
body unyielding as wood, her heart longing for the 
bewitchments of the dance. She would have liked to 
melt into the arms of Algy Swartz, who sat beside her, 
but he, poor swain, was disqualified for this jaunty and 
charming exercise, not by his conscience, but by his 
legs, which were unruly as well as unregulated members. 
Meanwhile her hawk-eye did policeman’s duty about 
the room. She thought it a pity that the pink Mozam- 
bique and the black velvet wristlets should be lost, and 
she with so few opportunities to wear them. She 
thought they would look well in a quadrille ; her feet 
twitched nervously at a jolly reel tune that burst out 
from the dais. 

“ I’ll be getting up and be dancing by my lone self, 
if somebody don’t come along and ketch a’holt of me,” 
she said ; but the hint was lost on Algy Swartz, who 
returned a little tartly, — 

“ Yes, and be taken up for a crazy woman.” 

The lady angled on, and after a while caught a fish 
— a bouncer — in the shape of Grat Fontaine, who, in 
the spirit of an unbridled democracy, found a secret 
satisfaction in treading a measure with Miss Sarah Jane. 
He thought to tease Diana. Miss Sarah Jane pressed 
forward, an angular wrist-bone, encircled with black 
velvet, lay upon Grat’s arm, she treading the floors 
of a Spanish castle, her head in the clouds was in a 
tumult of pride and delight. 

But not so Miss Spangler ; there was a glower in her 
eyes as they followed Diana flitting hither and thither 
about the room, — in the maze of a waltz one moment, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


153 


the next in the windings of a quadrille. In vain did 
Algy Swartz consecrate the whole of his woodenness 
to Miss Spangler on the night of the coronation ball, 
— a thunder-cloud sat on her brow, and it was a por- 
tentous one. 

Lou-i-sy, in a corner of the vast room, shed soft 
beams from her serene countenance on those who ap- 
proached her. She was in a knot of country ladies, 
the fairest of them all, her muslin dress brightened by 
blue ribbons; the coronal of light hair making a frame- 
work for the brow, upon which innocence was en- 
throned. Hers was the ripeness of prime blending 
with the freshness of the virgin. 

“ Does she not look divinely good ?” asked Lough- 
borough of Diana, handing her to a seat. Diana 
nodded and smiled ; there was reverence in Lough- 
borough’s look when it rested on his betrothed. 

“ She is a Madonna, but of the German school,” an- 
swered Diana, her head set on one side for criticism. 
Loughborough was not displeased with the comparison. 
Man worships in Mary — flower of virgins — the emblem 
of maidenhood. She is the concept realizing for him the 
spirit of his mother, his wife, his daughter. Lough- 
borough felt impelled this evening to give more than 
was his wont of praise to Miss Fawnystawk ; perhaps 
this was a shield to protect his loyalty. 

Miss Fontaine was not usually beautiful, but at the 
coronation ball her loveliness was of that thrilling 
kind which gives to each man’s heart a pang ; for he 
feels that all must be denied — but one. Who will be 
that one ? that happy one who will feel some day the 
wreath of those beautiful, warm, white arms about his 


154 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


neck. It was not her features, nor her coloring, but a 
spirit of enticement which carried her forward, breathed 
through her limbs, and played upon her countenance 
like the chase of hues upon an opal. Invitation was 
on her lips, curled within its smile ; challenge in her 
eyes, which shot forth glances like brilliant arrows 
from betwixt the double rows of lashes. The lashes ; 
alas, they were the grievance ! Miss Fontaine, walking 
up and down the ball-room with gentlemen hovering 
about her, was breathed upon by her acquaintance ; 
also by feminine strangers. The ladies from Richmond 
objected to this bright star that had suddenly risen 
above the horizon of RibbelPs Spring. When men 
are in the minority, it is bad to see them monopolized. 
They should be handed around like cake. On this 
occasion the ladies served as lemonade, setting oif their 
cake with considerable acid. “ Poseuse” said a Balti- 
more lady slightly passee from behind gold-rimmed 
glasses ; “ low-neck ; bad taste. She acts as if this 
were her first outing. Fanciful, too ; you can tell that 
by her eyelashes.” 

“ Fanciful !” rejoined a dowager near, with several 
daughters to mate ; “ fanciful ! That is a mere nothing. 
I have watched women for many years, and I have 
never yet encountered one with such lashes who could 
be trusted. Looking from under them ; the sidelong 
glance. Eh ? Exactly. Pah ! how I abhor an in- 
sidious woman. Give me a frank, downright young 
creature.” The speaker put up her fan so as to be 
shielded from the view of any but her own blue and 
pink romps, — very downright young creatures they 
were. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


155 


So betwixt double rows of snubbers passed she of 
the vexatious eyelashes to take her place in the quad- 
rille. Innocently unconscious of the invisible arrows 
discharged at her, she stood at McElroy’s elbow ; he 
was now her partner. Miss Spangler, looking on, 
showed a tide of dark blood under her sunburned 
skin. Nothing could have been simpler than Diana’s 
dress of white muslin made with infant waist. At 
Newport such a costume was considered the height of 
elegance for young girls. Her hair, hanging down in 
two long Grecian braids, surmounted with the corona- 
tion wreath, and the floating ends of the Roman scarf 
about her waist, made her look provokingly young. 
Loughborough mentally pronounced her “ winsome ;” 
McElroy, “ matchless.” A kind of delirious ardor 
shot through him. 

Diana sailed through the quadrille without any special 
interest until it had whirled round to that figure called 
“ the coquette,” danced only, we believe, in country 
neighborhoods. It is an amusing figure, one which 
gives privileges to the naive coquetries of a rustic 
maiden. Miss Sarah Jane made use of them. She 
held her dress out on either side with her hands, like 
a Maypole suddenly converted into a ballet-girl, and 
chassezed her partner right and left with a vim not 
often encountered. But Grat was her match, and the 
two executed a florid pas-de-deux as entertaining to 
themselves as to their fellow-dancers and the on-lookers. 

“ Good heavens !” said Diana, turning to her blonde 
Turk, “ must I do that too ?” 

“As much as you will of it,” was McElroy’s lov r - 
breathed answer. “ Now is your chance to show pref- 


156 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


erence. Coquette with them all, Miss Diana, but not 
with me.” 

Diana’s smile was an answer of softness. It needs 
but a leap from a saddle to a woman’s heart ; just now 
McElroy was a splendid knight to this fascinated girl. 

“ Ladies to the right !” shouted the musicians, and 
the ladies, in as many as twenty quadrilles, forming a 
solid wedge in the ball-room, swept in front of their 
partners and balanced to the gentlemen standing next. 
Diana fronted Loughborough. She did not intend to 
be conspicuous on account of fine ladyism ; if she 
coquetted at all, she would not be outcoquetted by 
Miss Sarah Jane Jackson or the Pursle girls. “ She 
is not anchored to custom ; she floats, as I have seen 
crafts do, — played upon by her feelings, as they are by 
the waters,” was the thought in Loughborough’s mind 
as he took steps and made, with his great, broad, loosely- 
jointed figure, an excellent background for Diana’s 
pretty manoeuvres. 

Virginians of a quarter century back liked to see 
their women coy, yet spirited; dainty, yet prone to 
give chase, like the delicate-limbed deer. Diana kept 
her feet in unison with the music, advancing in a 
shimmer of- coaxing smiles ; then, just as Loughbor- 
ough, taken in by these allurements, stretched forth his 
hands to take hers and turn her round, lo, and behold ! 
with a head-toss she gave him the neatest little slip 
imaginable ; it was the deer, first decoying, then eluding, 
the huntsman ; the swan floating away from the eagle. 
So with her flying sash-ends, her arms thrown behind 
her, the words, — I do not choose to take a dare, — 
written upon her person, she retreated, and danced 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


157 


forward to the next gentleman, with the suspicion of 
a side-long glance in order to see how Loughborough 
took the cheat. On she went around the circle, varying 
each feint of capture with some dainty trick or other ; 
and it was amusing to see how disappointment dropped 
its shadow on the face of each expectant man, as she 
flashed past him without deigning the hand-clasp. Of 
course, each one had dreamed of being blessed with a 
touch of the young thing in the primrose years of life. 
The primrose is delicious to those who have gone a bit 
further in the dusty road of experience; but no, to 
each one she gave the slip, until she reached McElroy. 

“ One would think you had danced the coquette all 
your life,” he whispered, as they balanced. “ Inspira- 
tion is your dancing-master.” When he held out his 
hands to turn her, she yielded at once. It was the 
comedy of surrender. Was not he the victor knight? 
Did she not wear his crown ? 

“ Gentlemen to the left !” shouted the musicians, 
and a kicking up of feet immediately shook the dust 
out of the very planks. What a capering ! 

In the first years succeeding, the war there was 
abroad in the land a furious thirst for pleasure ; men 
threw themselves into dancing, as they had done into 
fighting, with ardor. But McElroy was an exception ; 
he was a listless dancer. The gentlemen went on their 
rounds ; Diana kept up her coquetting on tiptoe ; and 
her eyelashes, in conjunction with her toes, probably 
supplied fresh relays of criticism to the lady lookers-on 
ranged the length of the walls. 

“ You shall not give me the go-by this time, you 
little vixen !” whispered Grat Fontaine, dancing up to 
14 


158 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


his niece with admiration in his fiery chestnut eyes. 
He loved a daring woman, despised a squeamish one. 
Vixen on his lips meant more than angel on most 
men’s. Diana laughed and played with him. He 
looked like King Hal, and danced royally. Diana 
was interested in his mincing steps, set off with some- 
thing amazingly like pigeon- wings ; she dreamed of 
Sir Roger de Coverley ; her mind, still upon dancing, 
was in pursuit of the history of fancy steps. At 
Newport the men walked through quadrilles. In an 
absent-minded moment, Grat seized her two arms, with 
hands whose fingers bit into the tender flesh, and 
whirled her round, round, round ; willed she, nilled 
she. She was vanquished, and came out of her whirl 
deprived of breath and in a flame of hot scarlet color. 

“ That was all you wanted, — a little rouge,” laughed 
Grat close to her ear. “ You’ve got that now. You’ve 
got a complexion that would shame a pi-o-ny.” 

This was rough handling; but Grat Fontaine was 
famous for his rough handling of women, and he had 
never been liked the less for it. He belonged to the 
class labelled “ privileged.” Diana pointed to red 
marks on her arms. “ Bracelets : you needed them. 
When women go about with naked arms, it’s a sign 
they expect to be pinched.” This was Grat Fontaine’s 
way of making strictures upon Diana’s low neck and 
short sleeves, — a fashion then not introduced into the 
Valley; for in those days the women had their necks 
shut up close and their arms covered with a bit of 
muslin, if with nothing thicker. He knew not which 
to admire most, — the beautiful nudity in the woman, 
or the rebellion against custom of the kinswoman. 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


159 


Poor Grat ! feeling always stopped the mouth of think- 
ing with him. Diana ceased to pity her arms, shook 
her fist at her uncle, half in fun, half in defiance. He 
grinned, turned on his heel, and left her. Miss Fon- 
taine was in a gentle mood to-night ; she wore the cestus, 
not the bow. 

“ Let us go to the porch,” proposed McElroy. 
“ Gratis a splendid fellow, but a ruffian; not fit for 
ladies. Did he hurt you ?” 

“ Nothing to speak of. He is the strangest man. 
Could a woman tame him ? I wonder if he will ever 
marry ? I should somehow pity his wife.” 

“ Not the best woman on top of the earth.” 

“Why?” 

McElroy shrugged his shoulders and trifled with his 
beard. They paused for a moment in front of an em- 
brasured window which framed a rising moon. “ How 
shall I explain, Miss Diana? You have to be a man 
to understand us.” 

Diana turned her head and caught sight of Lough- 
borough, seated now at the side of his betrothed. 
Without appearing to observe, in reality he saw every- 
thing that went on about him minutely, especially the 
movements of Diana. It is strange how much of the 
world can get into the human eye; with the figure of 
a provoking girl in the trail of his, Loughborough had 
gone through the figures of the quadrille. Like needle 
to the pole, Diana’s glance pointed to that rebuking 
eye. She defied the rebuke, but it made her feel 
uncomfortable. 

“Yes, let us go to the piazza; it is not too cold,” 
she murmured; and Loughborough saw them depart 


160 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


through the doorway. The air was sharp ; they had to 
walk ; Diana drew the broad streamers of her Roman 
sash about her neck. 

“I do not care for dancing,” said McElroy, as they* 
walked up and down. “ It is only the excuse for a 
partner.” 

“ Riding is consecrated to you ; every other exercise 
must seem tame.” 

“ It was not tame to-night,” was the significant 
answer ; “ but in riding, a man is the horse’s master ; 
in dancing, the woman’s slave.” 

“ Slave !” Diana shot a challenge from her eye. A 
woman does not mind hearing a man call himself a 
slave, for she knows that he does not mean it. Love is 
often a narcotic to a man’s intellect, while it is always 
a stimulant to a woman’s. 

McElroy, it will be seen, cared to play with love, 
but did not choose to make it personal, — knights, 
tourneys, music, moonlight. 

Diana’s imagination was on fire. She wished that 
McElroy would say to her that she was the loveliest, 
dearest creature to him on earth, that he could not live 
without her. She was ready for the most absurd et 
cseteras ; but if McElroy said this, it was by implica- 
tion ; he was enamored, but he was prudent. How 
strangely do these qualities coalesce sometimes in the 
same individual. 

“ You are not a slave, but a knight ; and you have 
crowned me queen.” 

Diana thought she would rally him ; but her voice 
breathed the softest little tremolo. 

“Did you ever read that ballad by one of our 


DIANA FONTAINE. 161 

Southern poets, ‘ The Tournament V ” was McElroy’s 
question. 

Diana had never heard it ; would he recite it ? He 
consented* 

“ There are two knights, — Heart and Brain, ” — he 
said. “ I am Heart ; you shall guess who is Brain.” 
His elocution was of the florid type ; but the florid 
type is potent with youth ; and its excesses are deli- 
ciously chastened by moonlight. He began. Diana 
bent forward, her eyes divided between the sward in 
front of her, whereon the tourneying knights had 
pranced that afternoon, and McElroy’s slim figure out- 
lined against the pearly atmosphere. The verses are 
by Lanier, written in camp at the beginning of the 
war. McElroy’s criticisms were always either glorifi- 
cations or abuse. After glorifying Lanier, he gave, 
thrillingly, “ The Tournament.” 

Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, 

And the Knights still hurried amain 

To the tournament, under the ladies’ eyes, 

Where the jousters were Heart and Brain. 

Flourished the trumpets ; entered Heart, 

A youth in crimson and gold : 

Flourished again ; Brain stood apart, 

Steel-armored, dark, and cold. 

Heart’s palfrey caracoled gayly round, 

Heart tralira’d merrily ; 

But Brain sat still, with never a sound, 

So cynical-calm was he. 

Heart’s helmet crest bore favors three 
From his lady’s white hand caught ; 

While Brain wore a plumeless casque ; not he 
Of favor gave or sought. 

14 * 


l 


162 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


The herald blew. Heart shot a glance 
To find his lady’s eye ; 

But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance 
To aim more faithfully. 

They charged ; they struck ; both fell, both bled ; 

Brain rose again, ungloved; 

Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said, 

“ My love to my beloved.” 

A pause followed the recitation, which Diana broke 
with the murmured words, — 

“ Exquisite ! The story of the war in a nutshell.” 

McElroy shook his head. 

“ I am not regarding it from the national, but 
from the personal stand-point. It is the tournament 
of life that I am thinking of, not the manoeuvres of 
warfare, nor the mockery of an afternoon. I am 
thinking of myself, — my attitude to woman — one 
woman.” 

He stood out on a background of sadness. To 
fathom his trouble, she asked, — 

“ Are heart and brain always opposed ?” 

“The moralist would say yes, generally, and that 
they should not be. But who cares for him ? What 
does he know about love ? When it is a question of 
passion, man plays the rdle of Heart, in Lanier’s poem ; 
woman, that of Brain ; for then she, who is generally 
tender-hearted, becomes suddenly prudent, practical, 
keen-sighted.” 

The stricture upon her sex was veiled in the deepest 
melancholy of reproach. The subject of love had 
glided into the conversation so naturally, so spontane- 
ously, that Diana did not think to make it a matter 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


163 


of inward comment. She -was only conscious that 
McElroy’s reproach made her feel guilty, and that she 
wished to exonerate herself. 

“ Then you think Brain is ” 

“ Simply this, — the tilter before whom my lance 
falls prostrate. Death to me is to her — ungloving.” 

McElroy’s fingers were interlaced ; his head drooped, 
so that he did not perceive his companion’s annoyance. 
Had she not been ready to melt to the music of his 
speech ? Why, then, this hopelessness ? Why did he 
lay traps for glance and smile, if the giver of them 
were not to be captured ? His love, his very triumphs, 
were but the decorations of despair. Alas ! he was 
trifling with the bar-sinister in his disposition. 

He dared not go further than a certain point with 
Diana Fontaine; for, with all her abandon and 
romantic softness, she was a sword in sheath. There 
was not an inch of her person which did not betray 
mettle. McElroy, standing shoulder to shoulder with 
her on this particular night, believed, in the confidence 
of manhood, that all he had to do was to stretch forth 
his hand in order to gather this peerless rose ; but he 
feared the thorn. Here was where McElroy ’s cowardice 
lay; his indulgence to himself was colossal. He 
feared the man, woman, or child that would not be 
equally indulgent to him. He had talked of man’s 
being a slave. The truth is, he had no conception of 
woman except as an enslaved creature, — a bangled, 
jewelled slave, — scented with attar of rose. It is 
strange how the Oriental crops out now and then in 
the descendants of our pioneers. 

From the ballroom floated strains of the “ Blue 


164 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Danube” waltzes, but they could not bridge over the 
silence which ensued between these two romanticists. 
Diana would not speak. McElroy looked up to find 
her playing with a little sandal-wood fan, her eyes 
raised, deliciously, to the stars. He could have begged 
for her heart on the instant ; but, somehow, he dared 
not. He trembled, flushed, threw out his hands 
toward her. She did not recede. He clasped her arm, 
delighted for an instant in its soft flesh. She did not 
recede. He must speak. 

“ Give me something that is yours, Diana, that you 
have touched, to be my talisman through life. That 
fan ! it will be some comfort in my misery.” 

Misery; still trading upon misery. Diana’s own 
cheek reddened with scorn. She started, and the 
sandal-wood fan dropped from her hand to the floor, 
breaking into a dozen pieces. 

“The curse is on me,” muttered McElroy, in a 
tragic whisper, as if he had been declaiming Hamlet. 
Diana might have laughed but for the moonlight. Its 
madness was upon her. She was unobservant of a face 
that darkened upon them both from the window, and 
of two figures that stepped up behind her, until she 
heard a voice which said, — 

“ Diana, the air is turned shrewd. Take this shawl, 
or come in, won’t you ; you’ll get your death, ’deed 
you will.” 

It was Lou-i-sy, leaning on Loughborough’s arm. 
Both looked gravely at the girl, standing bare-armed 
in the sharp and chilly mountain air, the fringed 
ends of her Roman scarf huddled about throat and 
shoulders. The spell broke suddenly, as it were a cord 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


165 


snapped, and Diana knew it by a little thrill in her 
bosom. 

“ I will go in,” she said ; “ it is late.” 

“ Nigh on to one. Not so long, these nights, before 
sun-up,” was Lou-i-sy’s answer, as she touched with a 
caress the girl’s hands, pleased to find in her the dis- 
position to retire. 

Diana turned to go, then stopped, looked back. 
McElroy stood motionless, — a piece of sculpture. The 
heavenly Diana wrapped him in her mantle of mystery 
and romance. He stood before her the hero of grief ; 
but the quick glance from the earthly Diana broke over 
him, tossing aside the mantle of mystery and pene- 
trating to the pseudo-heroic behind it. 

With swift insight, she suddenly saw him in the 
category of men who, sleek and comfortable, are for- 
ever pitying themselves ; who are cruel through their 
want of strength, as ice is through its want of heat. 
There is no cruelty like that of negation. How 
knowledge comes in flashes ! The hoof to Cuvier 
meant an animal ; the note of a bull-frog, the chirp of 
a cricket, to a musician, means a diapason. The face 
in a crowd, to a poet, means a tragedy, a comedy ; a 
suggestion lays the corner-stone of a whole experience ; 
but to youth, knowledge is but a superior instinct, or, 
at best, a sporadic gleam, which departs as suddenly as 
it came. It is wrapped in impulse which brings its 
own reaction. Therefore to the chill of this disap- 
pointment succeeded the hot gush of sympathy when 
Diana was in her bedroom. “ Think how he has suf- 
fered, and how full of feeling he is,” she whispered to 
herself, contradictorily, as, getting into bed, she drew 


166 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the coverlet over her. Sympathy, however, did not 
prevent sleep ; it only colored her dreams. She thought 
she was holding out her hand to help McElroy mount 
to her window, he said ; to the stars, she said. She 
thought he ascended the fairy-ladder to the tune of 
“ Lorina ;” but, nay, it was not he ascending a ladder. 
Yet there was certainly the sound of “ Lorina.” She 
opened her eyes wide and looked around. She had 
been asleep. She looked again and listened. Her cell 
of a room was no longer flooded with moonlight ; it 
lay in shadow; while from underneath the window 
there arose on the night-air a stream of melody. Flute 
and violin accompanied baritone and tenor. That 
tenor, full of velvet notes ; she knew it well. It said 
to her, “ When I am near, love, I set the key of your 
slumbers ; while you sleep, I wait and watch, not far.” 
Such words a young girl reads betwixt the lines of the 
serenade. Intoxication was still upon her. Diana could 
not stay quiet in her bed, but bounded up, threw over 
her the skirt of her habit, and muffled her body in the 
shawl Lou-i-sy had given her. Kneeling on the floor, 
she touched the window-sill with her chin, screening 
herself with the curtain, and looked down upon the 
serenaders. Loughborough had his flute ; Jim Pursle, 
hig violin ; Grat Fontaine supplied the baritone ; and 
McElroy, standing apart from the others, so that he 
was directly in front of Miss Fontaine’s window, 
poured forth his tenor for her ear, she knew, and for 
hers alone. The other inhabitants of Ribbell’s Spring 
might snore themselves to death, for all that he cared, 
provided that one pair of ears was awake and listening. 
The moon had set, but the sky was under the gentler, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


167 


subtler influence of stars. There was no vibration of 
Diana’s window-curtain lost upon the troubadour, who, 
with one end of his Spanish cape thrown over his 
shoulder, held in his hands a banjo, which he barely 
touched, surrendering himself altogether to his own 
voice. 

The luxury of his life was to woo a woman whom 
his destiny made it impossible to win ; the fault being 
his, not hers. He was forever talking about his evil 
star ; you would have thought he farmed out an entire 
constellation. It was the time when, in the Byronic 
spirit, men talked of “ The star of my destiny has set,” 
et caetera. 

Such a spirit was pooh-poohed by Loughborough, 
who was wont to say, “ Fatalism ! Nonsense ! There 
is no fatalism but silliness.” Diana, half glimpsing 
at defects of character in the fascinating McElroy, for- 
got them utterly when under- the spell of his voice. 
Recall the most beguiling tenor you ever heard, and 
you have his. After “ Lorina” they sang “ Kill dat 
’Possum,” a round in minor chords ; then “ Beautiful 
Isle of the Sea,” and “Ever of Thee I’m fondly 
Dreaming after which the other three sat down on 
the grass, and McElroy, with another toss of his Spanish 
cape and a prelude upon his banjo, gave as a solo, — 

“ Twinkling stars are shining, love, 

Shining on you and me.” 

McElroy’s gaze throughout the song was fixed upon 
the window-curtain above him. Well he knew that an 
arrowy young figure was behind it, palpitating warmly 
to the music of romance. 


168 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


After the serenaders had departed, Diana still lin- 
gered at the window ; the stars seemed to have caught 
up the insinuating measure ; they sparkled to ear as 
well as eye ; but there was not much time for reverie. 
Her soft thoughts were sent into a mad whirl by one 
long, hideous shriek that cut the air, that set the corridor 
into confused mutterings. There was a bustling to and 
fro in front of her room, then a retreat. Diana opened 
the door and went out hastily. Several other doors 
shut as she stepped into the hall, lighted by an ill- 
smelling, smoking oil-lamp. The people had scattered. 
Horrified by the memory of that shriek, she could not 
make up her mind to re-enter her room without first 
discovering its cause. She tapped at Lou-i-sy’s door. 
No answer. She looked in : Miss Fawnystawk was not 
there. “ Good heavens !” cried Diana, aloud. “ What 
horrible thing can have happened ?” Her imagination 
disturbed, she walked up and down the hall. Through 
the transom at one end she discovered light and heard 
voices. It was Number 10. She did not know who 
occupied Number 10. She walked back and stood in 
her door-way, anxiously waiting. The horrors of sus- 
pense ! She must at least know what had happened. 
Was it to one of her friends? The door of Number 
10 opened at last. A tall, uncouth figure walked in 
her direction ; it was a man with a night-lamp in his 
hand. Diana flew to meet him. 

“ Dr. Loughborough,” she cried, recognizing him ; 
“ what comfort in the sight of you ! Tell me what has 
happened. That horrible shriek. Lou-i-sy ?” 

“Not Lou-i-sy,” answered Loughborough, looking 
down regretfully at the girl. 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


169 


“ Some one else is ill ?” 

“A sudden attack of hysteria,” was his answer, 
given with the professional air which he did not 
habitually assume. 

“Who ?” 

Diana put the question briefly. She was interested, 
but no longer excited ; for Loughborough’s presence, in 
spite of gravity, reassured. His full, intelligent gray 
eye, so warm in hue, made every one its friend. It 
was one of those wide-seeing eyes that quietly observes 
everything, to the minutest object, nothing being un- 
worthy of its glance. He was quicker of sight than of 
speech. 

“ Is it any one I know, who is ill ?” 

“Yes, Miss Fontaine. You count Miss Spangler 
among your acquaintance ?” 

“ Miss Spangler ! She ? Let me go to help nurse 
her.” 

Diana was already moving in the direction of Num- 
ber 10, but Loughborough laid a detaining hand upon 
her arm. 

“ No need, Miss Fontaine. Lou-i-sy stays with her 
till sunrise, then Miss Sarah Jane.” 

“ But let me help Lou-i-sy.” 

Diana was again on the move. This time Lough- 
borough’s touch on her shoulder contained the essence 
of authority. 

“Impossible, Miss Fontaine. I have left orders 
that Miss Spangler must not be excited. I have given 
her a powerful opiate. It will probably quiet, though 
not make her sleep, I fear.” 

“ But I will not excite. I like to nurse, and Lou- 
15 


H 


170 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


i-sy must be tired/’ Diana persisted, because she 
hated passivity ; to lie down quietly in her bed with 
tragedy near was not to her taste ; it is but a few steps 
from the romantic to the tragic. 

“Yes; but you will excite, Miss Fontaine, however 
innocent your intentions ; the sight of you would make 
Vanessa Spangler raving mad.” 

“Of me?” 

Diana stood wide-eyed, her brows anxiously drawn ; 
there was something pitiful in her little dainty chin 
lifted eagerly to Loughborough’s face. He could 
hardly help smiling. 

“ Poor child,” he said, looking down upon her with 
infinite kindness, “you are not to blame for other 
people’s faults ; but,” he flushed a little, “ don’t you see 
that Vanessa Spangler is an unfortunate woman, a 
jealous one, and jealous of you ? She must not see 
you until this paroxysm is over.” 

“ J ealous ! Is she so deeply in love as that ?” 

The high-stepping young lady could hardly associate 
such picturesque passions as love and jealousy with 
that sunburned, dumpy little woman. 

“Ah, Miss Fontaine, who shall say what the human 
heart is ? None but its Maker. Such natures as this 
girl’s — sullen, without resources, without elasticity — 
are the ones that run to the morbid. It is the bilious, 
not the nervous temperament offers the darkest prob- 
lems to humanity ; but there is a streak somewhere in 
this girl’s heredity. However, I hope we may over- 
come it. Such patients often run into emotional in- 
sanity or melancholia.” 

“ How horrible !” Diana sat down on a chair within 


DIANA FONTAINE 


171 


her door- way and looked the picture of distress. “ What 
can I do ?” she asked. 

“ Nothing ; and you have nothing to blame yourself 
for, excepting, perhaps, lack of insight. Do not accuse 
yourself falsely, Miss Fontaine. Go to bed and rest. 
You are strong and vigorous, but you need rest. I 
will tell you in the morning how she is ; meanwhile, go 
to your bed and sleep the sleep of the innocent. You 
have only the ordering of your own mind, not of 
others. Imprudence, even, is not a sin.” 

How full of sympathy he was ! His voice expressed 
it when he said, a moment later, “ Good-night ; all will 
be well yet, I hope.” 

His voice rang hope to her ear, and it stayed with 
her after he was gone. “ He warned me about Vanessa 
that night at Miss Sarah Jane’s. How generous not 
to remind me of that now ! After all, I cannot help 
her having the wrong streak, and I cannot help Cap- 
tain McElroy’s fancying me” were the words of con- 
solation she poured into her own ear ; but, in spite of 
this, she woke up, a few hours later, by no means light- 
hearted. 


CHAPTER, X. 

The year 1862 saw the Valley of Virginia the 
theatre of a series of manoeuvres which will forever 
fascinate the scientific mind and thrill the feeling 
heart. McClellan, with his hundred thousand, held 
the Peninsula, his eye fixed upon the pinnacle of St. 
Paul’s in the capital; Milroy was on the Staunton 


172 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


road, with Fremont not forty miles away ; Banks at 
Strasburg; Shields east of the Blue Ridge, — all of 
them with minds centred upon the Valley. The 
Valley lost meant the loss of Virginia. “Hold the 
Valley !” was Jackson’s watchword ; and he, king of 
strategists, with Ashby, prince of sabreurs, did hold 
the Valley. How was it done? How did thirteen 
thousand make headway against five times their num- 
ber ? The world knows that in thirty-five days two 
hundred and forty-five miles were measured on foot, 
and four desperate battles won, by these Confederate 
chieftains. The world knows Jackson’s feint of flight 
and what that flight meant, — the routing of the whole 
Federal army of northern Virginia, the Confederates 
on their heels. The world also knows the intrepid 
charges of Ashby and his wonderful flank movements ; 
also the quick eye of his genius as a scout. With such 
a partisan, Jackson could overmaster numbers, disci- 
pline, and skill. But the world will never know the 
grief which overswept the troops, depressed Virginia, 
overwhelmed the Valley, when Ashby — their hero — 
was killed, in the darkest hour of the war. When his 
veterans looked upon him dead, “ the mother in them 
rose armies sobbed. Two years before his time to 
go, Jackson, illustrious mourner, stood alone by Ashby’s 
bier and looked at the still face, the stark, manly 
bosom on which rested that superb coal-black beard 
which had made him always the significant figure 
at the front of his column. With what phenomenal 
power he had cheered his men, waving his sabre and 
thundering forth these words, “Forward, my brave 
men, forward !” Of Ashby, Jackson said in an official 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


173 


report, “ As a partisan officer, I never knew his supe- 
rior ; his daring was proverbial, his powers of endurance 
incredible, his sagacity intuitive in divining the pur- 
poses and movements of the enemy.” Mothers who 
had never seen him, wept as if a son had fallen ; aged 
men cried out in anguish, “ Would I could have died 
for him !” 

Ashby was the Valley’s hero, and with him Mc- 
Elroy had been associated closely during these first 
years of the war. It is one of life’s riddles, that the 
man who has within him certain elements of greatness 
should only show them at some one period of his life, 
never again. McElroy was a captain in one of the 
companies in Ashby’s brigade, and second only to his 
chief in valor of the daring kind. Had he died then, he, 
too, might have been accounted a hero ; but his power 
was that of the blood. With laugh in eye and song 
fluttering the mustache upon his lip, he met the thun- 
ders of the enemy’s artillery. He could face the mis- 
fortunes of war, but not, alas ! those of peace. It 
might be that recklessness was the bulwark of his 
courage, and fatalism the shield of his heroism ; but 
certain it is, that no man ever shouldered physical 
danger with more careless joyance ; and no man ever 
fell more limpl ' into the arms of ordinary temptation 
than he. Honor was his radiant beloved when she 
peeped at him from behind the scarlet battle-flag ; but 
when stripped of her military trappings, she was his 
abandoned mistress. 

There were two McElroys, — one on the field, one in 
the school-house on Pugh town heights. We see the 
first McElroy at Chancellorsville, with Stuart, in that 
15 * 


174 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


charge upon the triple lines of breastworks blue with 
Federals on that night when Stuart sang out, in the 
face of Hooker, “Old Joe Hooker, will you come out 
of the wilderness, come out of the wilderness, come out 
of the wilderness ?” 

What a pitched battle ! what splendid handling of 
artillery ! what carnage ! Jackson dying ; Hooker re- 
treating, with his army demoralized and shattered. 
Alas ! the flag still waved on that fair night ; but it 
began to sink ; inch by inch did it go down, — Gettys- 
burg, Spottsyl vania, and Petersburg ; at Appomattox 
it lay upon the earth. This was McElroy’s last battle ; 
here he received a bullet which maimed, though it did 
not kill him ; for a while he was all but a dead man. 

War, however, has its idyls ; one of McElroy’s was 
in the setting of the Valley Farm, whither he had 
gone to recruit in the October of 1864. His convales- 
cence was rapid, and he hoped to rejoin his company 
by Thanksgiving. During this period of convales- 
cence, he was the darling of the Pughtown ladies. His 
uniform, in tatters, detracted no. whit from his heroic 
mien ; and tossing back those loose, light locks of his 
from a face of poetic softness, he contrived to snatch a 
delicious little nibble at repose. How the soldiers 
delighted in the intervals of furlough, breaking in, as 
these did, upon the dreary dulness of camp life or the 
delirious excitement of battle ! How welcome, too, the 
furloughed soldiers were with their war-slang, their 
news of the movements of generals, their messages 
from the far-away chaparrals of the Wilderness to the 
mothers and sweethearts tucked away within the moun- 
tain-foldings of the V alley. They were ready to abuse 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


175 


their generals like a pack of lads from school. Even 
Funk grew eloquent, coming home to nurse a wounded 
leg, and telling over his pipe how “ Old Blue-Light 
was on the dog-on-est rampage,” which meant that 
General Jackson was about to engage in a pitched 
battle ; or that “ Old Jeb tuck a’holt of the Yanks, 
tooth and nail,” which meant that General Stuart had 
sent the Federals flying ; or “ Uncle Robert ain’t got no 
use for the Blue-coats,” which meant that General Lee 
was about to come down upon the enemy. 

There were songs, rhymes, and jokes to make up the 
wit of camp-life. “ I tell you, Miss Vanessy,” said 
Algy Swartz to his beloved, when it came his time to 
be home on furlough, “ we were all a-settin’ round the 
camp-fire as dreary as could be, not the munchings of 
a mosquito in our haversacks, when a North Carolina 
fellow near our camp got his hands on some hardtack. 
He laid it on his canteen-lid as precious as if it were 
gold, and then hied him off to get some water. When 
he came back, lo, and behold, the hardtack were gone. 
He sat down and kinder locked together his long yel- 
low fingers, hung his head, and sung out, in a mournful 
i kind of a chant, 4 Who tuck that cracker from the 
cracked skillet-lid ?’ This was taken up by his com- 
rades, and on through the entire regiment. In five 
minutes a thousand men were singing out in the mourn- 
fullest kind of chant, ‘Who tuck that cracker from the 
cracked skillet-lid?’ We weren’t dreary any more 
that night. We didn’t get anything to eat ; but a man 
can warm his stomach with laughing and singing, if 
lie’s a mind to. That wasn’t long before the battle of 
Cold Harbor.” 


176 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


The ladies had their tales to tell, — how they ran the 
blockade, how they made shoes ; one had fashioned a 
dress out of old silk umbrella-tops, to wear at a wed- 
ding. The talk, like most talk, was good for little or 
nothing, but it enlivened the gatherings, at which they 
picked lint or made candles. This last occupation was 
not without interest, and McElroy, his arm in a sling, 
enjoyed seeing the cord, fifty yards in length, twisted in 
lard or tallow and coiled into a cylinder. 

War equalizes ; barriers, like adamantine walls in 
time of peace, are thrust down by war’s rude hand. 
McElroy, with his handsome face, his soldier’s arm, 
his rounded a’s, his straight, delicately-curved nose, 
used only for smelling and not at all for pronouncing, 
enchanted the Hessian virgins in the neighborhood 
of Pugh town. The best-looking and the best off of 
these was Miss Vanessa Spangler, whose father owned 
a still-house on the fork of the roads leading to Back- 
Creek. She often came to the Valley Farm in the 
hopes of catching a glimpse of the tattered regimentals 
and the ambrosial beard of McElroy, and she never 
came empty-handed. She was not above walking in 
war-times ; and the hero of her romance actually 
found pleasure in the sight of her coming through the 
sumach bushes on the other side of the brook. In 
war-times, woman’s smile is sweet. Miss Spangler 
would have given her heart’s blood, had it contained 
balm, to heal this furloughed captain’s wounds. Yonder 
she comes ! Her gray homespun gown clouds the 
space between the sumach bushes; on her head a 
broad-brimmed hat, which her own hands have plaited 
out of wheat-straw ; on her arm a basket, full of — 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


177 


what? Something for the convalescent, of course. 
But what will it be this time? It turns out to be 
round little pats of cheese-curds, of an infantine white- 
ness and dimplement, covered with a homespun napkin. 
McElroy likes curds ; his eyes show his gratitude, and 
Vanessa is rewarded. 

They walk around the garden-patch, whereon a few 
flowers of the sturdier kind give gladness to the eye, 
because very few have outlived the keen October nights. 
The great, coarse, fleshy-looking zinnias, of solferino 
tint, actually look pretty when no other flowers are 
near. McElroy gathers several, asks Miss Spangler, 
in the soft dialect of eastern Virginia, to wear them in 
her bosom for his sake. She turns red like the zinnias, 
stands speechless, then stretches out her half-hander, 
darkened by much peeling of apples, to receive the 
nosegay. It is four weary years since McElroy has 
seen a woman blush. He cannot refrain from saying, 
as he surrenders the zinnias, “ I wish they were hand- 
somer. Roses are not worthy of you , Miss Spangler.” 
V an essays cheek grows purple. Roses not worthy of her ? 
She has never heard a speech that pleased her quite so 
well ; but she finds voice to say that “ She sets more 
store by zin-nias than by roses.” The captain is good 
at translating. He knows that a zinnia from his 
hand is worth a whole bunch of roses to the indulgent 
eye of Vanessa. 

In the October of 1864, some of the Southerners still 
clung to hope. The “ dread winter” had not yet come, 
when people sat down to naked tables and slept in 
sheetless beds, every shred of linen or cotton being used 
for the binding up of wounds. Those black winter 
m 


178 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


days and black winter nights were not yet come. Hope 
grew daily paler and paler ; the farmers saw weeds 
grow in fenceless fields, for the plough-horse was 
pulling cannon ; men and women, far and wide, saw 
the church-bells melted, that musket and rifle might 
not lack bullets. Such was the condition of the people 
when October poured its splendor along the hill-slopes 
and brought around once more that industry of the 
Valley called apple-butter boiling. During the war, 
when food was hard to get, this was especially a source 
of revenue to the farmer, — his orchard was his gold- 
mine. 

The Rheingau has its grapes ; the Sicilian vales have 
their oranges; Italian groves, their olives; but the 
Valley has its apples. Lips alone, not language, can 
do justice to them. Such beauties ! The bell-flower, 
tumbled about in yellow profusion, is the peer, the 
apple that should wear the coronet ; its meat, of a de- 
lightful brittleness, prints a spicy kiss upon the tongue 
at eating. Then the rambo packed away in the wagons, 
in a rosy, jolly crowd, their skins ready to burst with 
juice at the open sesame of your tooth. What a soft, 
melting pulp it has, and what an insinuating flavor ! 
So the apples came rolling along in wagons down the 
slaty turnpike, and the farmer, looking at them, re- 
solved the surest way of turning these pippins into 
gold ; but it was the farmers’ wives who were the real 
alchemists in this work. Delicious work ! the theatre 
for social enjoyment and for courtships. Young and 
old turned out at the apple-butter boilings ; for the 
fruit, peeled and cut for days beforehand, has to be set 
in a colossal copper cauldron suspended to a crane and 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


179 


allowed to simmer for more than twelve hours over a 
steady fire. Meanwhile the apples must be constantly 
stirred, lest they stick to the sides of the kettle and 
burn, which, of course, would spoil a fifty-gallon meas- 
ure. The stirring, therefore, is the important feature, and 
this is the guests’ duty. Two, a youth and a maiden, 
are set to stir together, being relieved every fifteen 
minutes, throughout the night, by two others ; and so, 
turn about, the guests achieve their task, — the matrons, 
in the dining-room, cutting and paring, the family 
looking after the supper, which is to come at ten 
o’clock, as the reward of these labors. 

Can you imagine the tidy kitchen, solitary except 
for the stirrers, warmed into reddish-brown color by 
the steadily burning logs in the open hearth -place. 
The shadows in the corners very black ; the light about 
the dresser, with its array of tins, very white ; while 
the home-made coil of candle on the deal table sheds 
a ring around it of deep orange. Gathered up in the 
glooms and gleams of these lights stand the stirrers, a 
youth and a maiden. Both grasp the long handle of 
the wooden spoon, each fronting the other ; so that, in 
the process of their work, they describe an arc upon 
the kitchen-floor, keeping at a distance of six feet from 
the cauldron. When he moves forward, she moves 
backward ; when he moves backward, she moves for- 
ward. JSTo conservatory, no curtained drawing-room, 
no moonlit piazza, ever offered such ravishing chances 
for a tete-d-tMe. While the apples are gently sputter- 
ing forth Suggestive kisses in the pot, and the cider in 
which they are bathed sends forth its witcheries, the 
pair can look each other in the eyes, — nay, must look 


180 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


each other in the eyes, — as they keep their beat, — for- 
ward, backward ; backward, forward. What reflector 
more favorable to the revealing of love than the 
polished tins which stand against the dresser like 
shields ! Then, in the revolution towards the deal 
table, the home-made candle keeps the young man in 
shadow, also the upper half of the girl’s face ; her lips, 
throat, and bosom are overlaid with yellow light. This 
time it is the more personal half that speaks to him ; 
the next time, when eyes and brow are brightened by 
those shining pewter dishes, it will be the spiritual. 
In this history of change there comes a sudden coup-de- 
theatre . Bang goes the handle of the spoon against 
the sides of the copper ! In the name of heart-beats 
and blushes, how did the mischance come about ? for 
the maiden is deft and the youth is skilful ; this is by 
no means their first stirring. But when a young man 
is looking down into a pair of pleasant eyes that are 
glancing up into his/ full of expectation, does he not 
naturally let his arm heave the spoon sideways against 
the pot, knowing, as he does, that, by all the rules of 
apple-butter boilings, he has the right to snatch a kiss 
from lips that do, or do not, resist? Sometimes the 
amorous rustic will allow her lips to be rifled ; some- 
times she tempts by resistance. He pulls the handle 
sideways with osculatory intentions ; she struggles to 
check the movement. Two new stirrers entering the 
kitchen interrupt this frolic, whereupon exeunt the re- 
sisting girl, the pursuing youth. When they reach 
the front door of the house, it is in the midst of shouts 
from the guests, who understand well enough the con- 
ditions of the chase. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


181 


The apple-butter cauldron, large enough to have 
boiled Og’s porridge, was borrowed seven times that 
October, and kept the Pughtown neighborhood in a 
social stir. It brought up, finally, at the Spitzers’, a 
mile this side of Fessenden’s mill, and here was to be 
the last “ boiling” of the season. McElroy went ; he 
wished to try his strength before starting on the mor- 
row to join his regiment. In the dark of desperation 
which filled this last year of the war, the idyls stand 
forth in tender, broken half-lights. 

Up to this time war had been war ; from this time 
.on to the cloge it was to be slaughter. The Confederacy 
tottered. The sanguine Southron was fast losing hope, 
even in Lee. It was the grappling of hounds with the 
hare ; victory was to him who could grip hardest and 
worry longest. In the earlier years pitched battles had 
been fought, after which the invader had rested. Rest 
was now at an end. Worry, harry, hammer, night 
and day, was Grant’s watchword. The Confederates 
must be fought incessantly ; kept eternally in arms ; 
deprived of sleep; starved, starved, starved. It was 
the theory of the mastiff, and it prevailed. Artillery 
thundered away the darkness; musketry rattled in 
the dawn ; mortar-shell burst over them at mid-day, 
veiling heaven’s blue in clouds of lurid smoke. Hark 
to the crash of the sharpshooters inviting battle through 
rain, sleet, darkness, and sunshine ! Death was at the 
head of the programme, defeat at its bottom. From 
border-land to border-land groans mounted towards the 
skies ; men were hurled to the earth, fighting sullenly, 
stolidly, doggedly, until, mouths in the dust, they 
tasted their own blood. 


16 


182 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


In the Valley, nicknamed, by the Northern brother, 
the “ Valley of Humiliation,” a desperate game was 
played. Sheridan was at his work of destruction ; in 
his hands whirled the firebrand which set at naught 
house, barn, mill, stock, fence, forage, ploughs, rakes, 
bread, life. Starvation was the muttered word which 
flew from mouth to mouth during that carnival of 
plunder. Night blushed to the wild red of a northern 
light. You could see a line of scarlet through seventy 
miles of heavens, kindled by the beacon-lights of the 
Yankees, as hay-rick after hay-rick went down, barn 
after barn, dwelling after dwelling, along those lovely 
slopes that a few months back laughed along the 
Valley in their gladness of young orchard and gentle 
pasture-field. “ I have destroyed,” said General 
Sheridan, “ two thousand barns filled with wheat, hay, 
and farming implements ; seventy mills filled with 
flour and wheat. I have driven in front of me four 
thousand stock. I have killed, and issued as rations 
to my troops, three thousand sheep.” 

But this is a tale of peace, not war ; and the present 
page is to record the idyl which, though homely, sheds 
its taper-light abroad. How mild, when contrasted 
with the brand of conflagration ! The Spitzers’ farm- 
house showed a front of brickwork softened down to 
the lowest of mezzotints when McElroy entered it, at 
the hour of candle-lighting, on the night of the apple- 
butter bee. 

The dining-room was already filled with housewives 
gathered around the table engaged in paring and quar- 
tering apples for snits. If this word is new to you, 
then you have never luxuriated in the most toothsome 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


183 


dish of a Hessian repast. The apples, when prepared, 
are strung, and then festooned about the ceiling of the 
room in which they are to undergo the process of dry- 
ing, after which they are cooked with corn-dumplings 
and a piece of fat meat. Of course, description will 
give you no idea of the luscious mouthful this can 
make when your appetite has been sharpened upon the 
whetstone of a November wind, such as is wont to 
prowl about these elevated ridge-lands ; after that raw 
blast anything cooked is good, we do assure you. 

“ Lord bless my soul, if there aren’t the captain ! 
Take a seat and set down.” The speaker, Mrs. 
Winker, made a show of dislodging her fat sides from 
the chair into which they were rather tightly packed ; 
but McElroy swept the negative over the group of 
ladies with his arm. A constant stream of visitors 
poured in out of the room ; but the tide was highest in 
the dining-room, where some young girls in homespun 
hovered about ; not doing anything in particular, but 
waiting for the time when they should be called upon 
to stir. There were also some lads and two or three 
old men, who kept aloof from the women and discussed 
in the hall-way the doings of General Early. 

The scene was enhanced by several soldiers on fur- 
lough, like McElroy, who, plunged in a kind of deli- 
cious idleness, watched from eye-corner the manoeuvres 
which the young girls made to attract their attention. 
Their time was not yet come, for the stirring had not 
been fully inaugurated as yet. 

“ Be you really going to leave us to-morrow, capt’n,” 
asked Mrs. Winker, “and you not over-strong yet?” 

“ Every arm is wanted,, madam, as things look now, 


184 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


— even a lame one,” answered McElroy. He had been a 
sanguine man up to the time of Sheridan’s appearance 
in the Valley, but from that time he turned melan- 
choly, discontented, peevish ; and this mood lasted to 
the end of his life, broken only by an occasional rose- 
jet of amorous feeling. The shadow was on his face, 
now, as he added, “He who would catch fish, Mrs. 
Winker, must not mind getting wet.” Mrs. Winker 
laughed, — a mellow, wadded laugh, — as fat souls will, 
and capped his saying with the following, — 

“ Prate is prate, but it’s the duck as lays the egg,” 
and she made her fingers fly with the knife over the 
apples with the swiftness of a weaver’s shuttle. 

The Hessian mind is astute, — it turns to maxims, 
never to fancies. 

“ That’s what I say,” threw in Mrs. Hefflebower, the 
mother of two stout boys in the Confederate service. 
“ There’s a good shape in the shear’s mouth, Captain 
McElroy, but you’ve got to cut to find it.” The lady 
tossed the worthless core of an apple into her mouth 
and crushed it, seeds and all ; but she winked a tear from 
her eyelids. She was hoping against hope. Would 
her rose-cheeked lads come back, or would they make their 
beds low down in the swamps of the Chickahominy ? 

“ Well, the Lord knows we’ve been lucky folks to keep 
our barns up this way,” rejoined Mrs. Winker, who 
had no son. “ But I’m good and sorry to see the capt’n 
settin’ off to join his regiment, and he that weak you 
could knock him over with your little finger. What’s 
Early and what’s Lee to do with men of such like, I 
should wish to know.” 

“ Alas !” the falling cadence in McElroy’s voice 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


185 


stirred the tough chords of the toughest hearts, “ what 
can Lee do, or Early, Mrs. Winker ? The army is 
reduced to starved men ; the horses to skeletons ; the 
Yankees are pressing the life out of us, but we must 
stand by each other to the end.” 

Mrs. Hefflebower rose abruptly and left the tables to 
its apples, the wives to their paring. The end ? She 
went to the front porch to choke back the tears which 
her stout lads called to overflowing eyes. She felt as 
if she heard their voices sobbing out to her from the 
lowlands, through the tangles of those Chickahominy 
marshes, “ Good-by, mother. We did our best, but 
’twarn’t no use.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Winker, presiding at the table, 
“ they say that the ox when weariest treads the surest. 
They’ve lost Ashby and Stuart and Jackson, but we’ve 
got Lee ; we’ve got him to hold on to yet.” 

Even Mrs. Winker’s voice broke. McElroy’s 
answer was a long-drawn sigh; he moved away to- 
wards the kitchen ; the move brought relief to his 
emotions. How cheery the kitchen looked ! a solitary 
lamp on the table, the great shining copper hanging 
from the crane over a low but steady flame that 
played about the logs underneath. 

A young girl stood alone in front of it 'with her 
hands upon the stirrer. The click of the latch, the 
keen October air, then the candle’s light extinguished 
by the sudden gust. She turned around, and showed 
the features of Vanessa Spangler. Irradiated by fire- 
light, her plainnesses were softened almost wholly away. 

“How nice and quiet it is here,” said McElroy, 
advancing. “ The deuce take that wind for blowing 
16 * 


186 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the flame out ! Til light it again but he didn’t. 
If he had, things might have gone differently. Events 
often shape themselves in the sequence of accident. 

“ I don’t mind,” was Miss Spangler’s laconic com- 
mentary on the light being out. “ They’re under way, 
at last,” she added, referring to the apples, and look- 
ing at them with a shyness not lost upon McElroy, 
who, in this Hessian kitchen and by the side of this 
Hessian maid, saw himself as invested with the su- 
premacy of Caesar in the purple. 

“ I almost envy those apples,” and his voice fell 
mournfully. “They look gay, simmering away so 
pleasantly in that sea of cider; their future course 
marked out, — the padding of dumplings, homes made 
in a pie ; human beings are less happy. Think what 
my future may be, — ours, Virginia.” 

“ Oh, cap’n, don’t talk like that.” They walked the 
beat together in the rhythm of stirring. He sighed ; 
she, tearing her mantle of shyness to tatters, flung it 
to the winds. “ I’ve been saving the milk so’s to have 
curds for you, and ” 

McElroy shook his head. “ You’ve been mighty 
good to me, Vanessa, indeed you have ; an angel ; but 
it isn’t any use now. I leave the Valley Farm to- 
morrow, to join my regiment.” 

Vanessa, at this news, stood quite still, on the verge 
of a sob. She struggled, but could not keep it down ; 
it billowed the bosom of her homespun gown. McElroy 
was not in the least surprised, and not greatly pleased 
by the demonstration. He strove to soothe with his 
voice, then, putting his small white hand upon her 
shoulder and patting it more soothingly, he said, — 


DIANA FONTAINE. 187 

“ There, there, don’t cry, Vanessa. I won’t forget 
you, upon my word I won’t.” 

“ Oh, Cap’n McElroy, be you really goin’ to leave 
us in the morning ?” was the question, put in a voice 
that was hardly intelligible for the sobs, and followed 
by an outburst of hot tears. 

In spite of the overcoming nature of her feelings, 
Miss Spangler was careful not to let go the handle 
which she still grasped ; for if one eye was sentimental, 
the other was prudent, and to let go the stirrer meant 
destruction to the Spitzers’ butter. 

“ It’s very nice being here, and you so kind. I will 
miss you, too, Vanessa.” He whistled gently his favor- 
ite air, trilling delicately on the bar that marked Lorina. 

“ How will you go, cap’n ?” 

“By lifts in wagons down the Valley, I suppose. 
I’d give this stiff arm for a horse at this moment. 
A horse ! a horse ! a horse !” interjected McElroy, and 
he looked eagerly at his companion. 

“ There’s the roan with the white stockings, the 
only one left ’cept’n pappy’s milk-and-cider horse.” 

The stress of thought had dissipated Miss Spangler’s 
emotions ; she was thinking profoundly. 

“ Your father would not hear to it, Vanessa.” 

Still, McElroy’s face lighted up ; the winged Bucepha- 
lus galloped across his features. Delight at the prospec- 
tive horse was obvious. He seemed already to hold the 
bridle-rein ; and if Vanessa Spangler was ever tempted 
m her life, she was tempted now. She whispered, — 

“ I could bring him at nightfall to the edge of the 
woods this side the Valley Farm unbeknown to pappy.” 
She breathed quickly. 


188 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Yes ; and I could take the back roads, with 
Wesley to show the way, clear the Yankee lines, and 
— oh, Vanessa, with a horse I am my own man again. 
Lend me your roan ; I’ll bring him back to you, if 
I’m not shot worse than this last time, sure as fate.” 

To be entreated by Captain McElroy ! Vanessa 
Spangler was poised on the glittering pinnacles of tri- 
umph. To have resisted would have meant downfall 
from those delicious heights. 

“Cap’n McElroy,” said the girl in a firm voice, 
“ I’ll bring you the roan to-morrow night after sun- 
down.” Feet pressed in at the kitchen-door ; a pair 
of new stirrers had arrived to relieve the captain, who 
was informed that games were about to begin in the 
parlor. In the Hessian districts, men are certainly 
the lords of creation ; women being regarded as shrewd 
and superior beasts of burden. 

Miss Spangler kept her word. The roan with the 
white stockings on, together with a flask of her father’s 
brandy, were given in exchange for a kiss right smack 
on her thick, pouting, red lips. She never saw the 
roan again, but she did see McElroy. 


CHAPTEK XI. 

Diana remained longer at Cloverdale than was at 
first intended. Dr. Loughborough thought it best 
that she should be outside the range of Pugh town for 
awhile, so that Vanessa Spangler should not be excited 
to fresh paroxysms by a possible meeting. Poor 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


189 


Vanessa ! her wits were incapable of rising to the 
climax of sarcasm; and she, being unable to pour 
forth the flood of anger upon another, felt these bitter 
waves fall back upon her own heart. Hurled into the 
dark lake of jealousy, she was tasting its acrid waters, 
and her mind revenged itself upon her own body. Dr. 
Loughborough saw her frequently, and Dr. Fawny- 
stawk was also called in. 

“ I think she will come out of it,” was Lough- 
borough’s verdict. “ These affections move in cycles, 
and the excitement is less dangerous than the melan- 
choly which alternates with it. To reduce the intervals 
of melancholia is my object. I want to get her away 
from Pughtown and into a new set of associations ; but 
she will not hear of it, and the old folks will not com- 
pel her. You must use your influence next time you 
ride over, Dr. Fawnystawk.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk shook his head. His principle 
was never to take advice ; besides which, he was a 
pessimist, with a vein of the epicurean running through 
him ; so he shook his head as he returned, — 

“ The ’oomen folks, you can’t do nothing with them ; 
they’re like the four-footeds. Only look at a horse 
when he gets his hind legs tangled in the reins or in 
the shafts ; he can’t get them out without a-breaking 
of his ankles. Seems to me, close to home in her 
daddy’s house is the best place for a crazy gal.” 

“ But she has relations in Shenandoah. A visit to 
them would straighten her, if anything would.” 

“Well, I’m not so keen to have crazy relatives 
a-comin’ it round me.” With which altruistic senti- 
ment the old doctor got himself on to his quietly- 


190 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ambling cob, and with well-packed saddle-bags rode 
off over Brandy Hill on a professional round. 

Loughborough had once said that he and Dr. 
Fawnystawk in consultation would be an ox and a 
horse harnessed to the same yoke. In the case of Miss 
Spangler, what Loughborough did one day old Fawny- 
stawk undid the next. The younger man grumbled 
not a little ; but he could not say much against the 
man very soon now to become his father-in-law. 
Besides which, he could hardly refrain from a smile 
over the old gentleman, — such a queer mixture of 
cupidity and frugality ; of thrift and self-indulgence ; 
of ignorance and sagacity; of shrewdness and preju- 
dice. Over the after-dinner pipe there had been tiffs 
betwixt the two concerning the theory of medicine, — 
the pet one being about calomel. 

Fawnystawk held that disease was a fibrin in the 
blood ; that it must be attacked and dispersed at the 
risk, even, of decomposing the vital fluid. He therefore 
did valiant work with calomel, and salivated his 
patients until they lost color, or until every tooth in 
their soft, spongy gums wobbled, declaring that saliva- 
tion was the same as salvation. Loughborough pro- 
tested with, “But, my dear sir, let me show you 
Blank’s work on anatomy, or Dash’s ‘ Manual on the 
Blood.’” In vain. Dr. Fawnystawk sang out the 
loudest ; decried new notions as inventions of the devil 
or makeshifts to get money, et caetera, et caetera. But 
Loughborough noticed, as the outcome of these tiffs, 
that there was a slow but decided renunciation of calo- 
mel as maid-of-all-work in the Pharmacopoeia. 

Dr. Fawnystawk had a patch in his garden dedicated 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


191 


to opodeldoc, hoar-hound, tansy, elecampane, chamo- 
mile-flowers, and a score of other simples ; for there was 
no root nor herb whose virtue he was unacquainted 
with. Lou-i-sy, a gentle Medea, was set to cull these 
herbs, and she was not without considerable knowledge 
of these plants, which she dried or made decoctions 
of, according to her father’s command. Loughborough 
often called her the better doctor of the two, as she had 
the sagacity without the stubbornness. Dr. Fawny- 
stawk kept his own store of medicines, but in a primi- 
tive way, enough to distract the wits of the modern 
druggist, who is hand and glove with so many and 
such deadly poisons. Dr. Fawny stawk’s powders were 
enfolded in small newspaper packages, tied with pink 
cord and huddled into the table-drawer of a secretary, 
in a room which he called his “ office.” None of these 
packages were labelled, so that when a dose was to be 
administered, a long operation had to ensue of untying, 
sniffing at, and tasting the contents of each one. Can 
you see him, spare and dried, wrinkled as a mummy, 
spectacles on nose, the nostrils of which were distended 
with the delicately-sniffing activity ? “ Fetty,” he 

murmurs, after a pinch twitched from one of these 
unlabelled packets , — fetty being his abbreviation for 
assafcetida ; or “ Fed oak,” tasting another. 

Red-oak bark, powdered, was the old-time substitute 
for quinine, a very youthful drug in the declining years 
of Dr. Fawnystawk, “ Here’s your man,” he would 
cry triumphantly, when the right medicament was 
reached. On a visit to a patient, where he nearly 
always spent the morning and took dinner if the house- 
wife was in any way notable, some such formulary as 


192 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


the following was invariably repeated : “Fetch me a 
quart bowl an’ a pint of biling water ; none of your 
lukewarm, ma’am, but well het.” This done and the 
powder thrown in, with the air of an ancient alchemist 
he would fold his arms and watch the process of solu- 
tion with mysterious intentness of gaze. Then, with a 
dilettanteish toss of the nose-tip which gave a perfec- 
tion of finish to the decoction, he would add, “ Cinny- 
mon or allspice, ma’am ? Which taste do you choose ? 
Cinnymon ? I agree with you. Correct palate, ma’am. 
All right, now. Dreen off the settlement and drink 
the fourth of a mugful three times per diem.” This 
rounding off of Latin was as invariable as the quart 
bowl and the pint of “ biling water,” all of which went 
together, and were expected, in a mysterious way, to 
work wonders in the system of the invalid. 

It is recorded that, departing once from a cottage in 
the Devil’s Hollow, the anxious mother followed him 
to the hitching-block with the question, — 

“ Did you say take the hull bottle of red-oak bark, 
doctor, or keep sippin’ at it with a spoon all the time ?” 

“The hull bottle, if you want to kill the brat; the 
hull bottle, paper, string, and all,” was the good 
doctor’s retort, adding sotto voce , for his own satisfac- 
tion, “ The ’oomen folks was made to be the plague of 
the men folks.” Then, his nostrils dilating with angry 
fumes, “if she kills the chap it ’ll be one fool less. You 
ain’t got but one tongue, but you’ve two ears, and if 
them as has two ears to hear with can’t understand, 
why, then, it must be the devil’s own doing, and no 
man can undo what he have done.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk believed in the personality of the 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


193 


devil quite as much as in that of the triune God ; and 
it may be that he feared one a little more than he 
revered the other. It is also recorded that on a 
winter’s night, many years back, a countryman rode 
up to the gate of Cloverdale, dismounted, and rapped 
furiously on the front door. Dr. Fawnystawk popped 
his head out of the window with the words, — 

“Well, what’s to pay now? Why ain’t you abed, 
Mr. Whoever-you-are ?” 

“ Why, my wife have took the liniment you give her 
to* rub with, and swallowed it inside, and she’s acting 
mighty queer. How much of that stuff do it take to 
kill a man?” 

“Is it the laudanum mixture ?” 

“ I don’t know, but I reckon it be.” 

“ Then, Lord save us, it ’ll take a few drops to kill 
a man ; but a woman she can take a pint without its 
hurting of her.” 

“But what mun I do, Dr. Fawnystawk?” The 
man was perplexed ; his voice trembled with anxiety. 

“ Hie home, Billy Funk, in the cracking of a whip ; 
bile your wife a pot of coffee ; make her drink it black, 
tell she can set up and say what she tuck laudanum 
for. It’s laudanum and not liniment, man.” 

Down went Fawnystawk’s window, and there was 
no more to be got out of him ; so Funk rode away, 
and his wife was granted one more reprieve from death. 
“ The folks are so dumb,” he would often say, as the 
excuse for not going to see patients, sometimes, when 
called upon. “They think they’re sick ’cause it’s 
winter-time, and they’ve nothing else to do; but it’s 
all in their mind. They’re as well as I am.” 

I n 17 


194 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Many a time Lou-i-sy the tender-hearted would en- 
treat him, with tears in her eyes, to go when called. 
She would bring him his overcoat, mitts, furred collar, 
and say, “ Do go, dear pappy, this time. Think how 
you’d feel if I was the one as was sick.” And Dr. 
Fawnystawk, snapping his little eyes at her violet, 
moist ones, would answer, “ Well, chile, you are a dewy 
woman. I’ll go to keep from having a shower in-doors, 
but ’t arn’t no use,” and his departure would be in the 
midst of mutterings. 

Sometimes Lou-i-sy remonstrated with him in behalf 
of her sex. “ All women, pappy, are good for some- 
thing or for nothing. Which is it?” 

“ They’re good for bossing,” the old gentleman 
would say, with a twinkle of his eye and a clap of his 
hands on her plump shoulders. “ What a good man 
saith, so say we; but as a good woman saith, so it 
must be. Eh, honey ?” 

’Lias Fawnystawk was in repute among the Hessian 
farmers; his arbitrariness impressed them. Besides 
which, he interfered in nowise with their mode of 
living, and took small note of hygienics or dietetics, — 
the gingerbread work of doctoring, he called it. When 
Loughborough objected to this stricture, the old doctor 
would round off a grunt with his favorite maxim, 
“ You are a good fellow, son-in-law that is to be, but 
can’t I be your friend without being your fool too ?” 
Then Loughborough kept his mouth shut, for no man 
likes to be accused of folly. 

Loughborough’s professional advice to the Spang- 
lers was of the simplest. “ Turkey, and not hog-meat, 
madam,” were his words to Mrs. Spangler. “ Exercise, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


195 


too. Your daughter had better wear out shoes than 
sheets. Come, Miss Vanessa,” he would add, turning to 
that young lady, who sat the livelong day in a dark cor- 
ner of the parlor, rocking violently, with no occupation 
but to munch her own heart and wet her cheeks with great 
hot tears, that kept them in a perpetual vapor-bath. 
“ Come, Miss Vanessa, dear young lady,” taking her 
hand kindly, — the word “ lady” caressed the ear of one 
accustomed to being classed among the “ woman-folks,” 
or to being styled “ the gal.” “ Come, cheer up ; don’t 
look as if you had lost your last friend. Why, you’ve 
got plenty of them inquiring after you every day, as I 
jog about on my rounds. I tell them you’re looking 
right well. Don’t you want me to tell them that 
you’re feeling better too, next time? Come, I’ve 
laid a wager that you’ll be at the Cedar-Dam Bush 
meeting. Don’t make me lose; that’s a good girl, 
Vanessa.” 

Miss Spangler enjoyed her misery too keenly, how- 
ever, to relinquish it all at once, even had she been 
able to do so. For the first time in her life she was 
creating a sensation ; and she heard herself gabbled 
about from morning to night by her mother and the 
wives of the neighborhood. Still, Loughborough’s 
heartiness was not without its influence ; it elicited, 
sometimes, response. One morning, he entered the 
dingy little parlor wherein the melancholic maiden sat 
enthroned, her hair cut short now, her Sunday dress 
on, enveloped with what she considered the parapher- 
nalia of dignity ; with the cunning of the invalid, she 
had found a way whereby to manage every member of 
her household. The least opposition to her wishes 


196 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


produced a paroxysm, to avoid which the young lady 
was left victor on the field of battle. 

“ I’ve come to see you, and I want to look at you,” 
was his salutation, throwing open the shutters with an 
impatient movement. He was no believer in dark 
rooms. 

Miss Spangler looked up suspiciously, to discover if 
any of her rights were being invaded. Suspicion is 
the warp of the ignorant mind. 

“ The flowers need sunshine ; so do young women,” 
was his answer to her questioning glance. He sat 
down near her on a lumpy, black horse-hair sofa, 
smiling, not as if he were paying a professional visit. 

“ Have you heard the news ?” he asked, keeping her 
features well in view. 

She shook her head. 

“ Come, guess : I’ll give you a dozen chances.” 

She shook her head ; the soddenness of despondency 
wavered not on her round, high-colored face. Lough- 
borough tempted her again. 

“ It’s about Algy Swartz.” 

Miss Spangler’s eyes consulted her hands, which lay 
folded in her lap. The name of Swartz aroused no 
curiosity. Loughborough tried again. 

“ He’s going to Texas, — on a ranch. What do you 
think of that?” 

Miss Spangler thought nothing of that. Lough- 
borough was sure he saw her eyelids twitch, as if she 
would have liked to ask a question ; but something more 
potent than Algy Swartz was required to take her off 
guard. Loughborough drew a book from his pocket 
and laid it beside those passive hands interfolded on 


DIANA FONTAINE. 197 

her lap. She did not ask what the book was, so he 
volunteered to tell. 

“ Such an interesting story, Vanessa, about a girl 
who thought herself deserted by her lover. She almost 
died of a broken heart.” 

Loughborough’s fine sense perceived tension in the 
body of his patient. She began to be interested ; so he 
went on. 

“ The lover is such an interesting fellow, too. I want 
you to read about him, — a toast among the ladies; 
handsome, beautiful voice.” 

“ Tenor?” interrupted Vanessa Spangler, in a shrill 
whisper. 

She was off guard now ; her eyes, slant, startled, 
half-shrewd, half-wild, were fixed upon his. 

“ Yes,” answered Loughborough, carelessly. “ That 
is, I believe so ; but, upon my word, I’ve really for- 
gotten. The book tells you all about that, and I want 
you to read it. But the girl, the poor girl, Miss 
Vanessa, how she would interest you ; she was all but 
heart-broken, you know.” 

“Did she die?” Vanessa clutched Loughborough’s 
arm and bent her head to his eagerly, as if life, every- 
thing, hung upon the answer. 

“ Lord bless you, no ; nothing like that. She got sick, 
but she got well ; and I didn’t reach the end of the story. 
I think it ended happily, but I’m not sure. Won’t you 
read it, and tell me when I come back ? I’ve got to 
go to Winchester to-day, and be gone quite a while.” 

Miss Spangler did not heed the rest ; she unfolded 
her hands from their supineness, opened the volume, 
and fixed her eyes heavily upon the first page. 

17 * 


198 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ That’s it. Good-by, Vanessa.” Loughborough 
shook the girl’s hand, and she looked up this time 
with a pleasant glance of recognition at him. 

“ I have tried the homoeopathic theory, little by 
little, day by day, week by week. I hope it may 
succeed.” 

At the door he encountered Mrs. Spangler. “ In- 
terest her, madam, in every other creature but herself, 
and you have begun her cure.” 

He spoke to a deaf ear ; a blank stare was his re- 
sponse, with the following words in a querulous 
tone, — 

“Vanessy’ always tuck to her book from a child. 
That’s where the trouble lies, I’m a-thinking, Dr. 
Loughborough. If she’d let her books be, there 
wouldn’t come such a pressure on to her brain, that’s 
my opinion.” 

Mrs. Spangler’s idea was that books and the mind 
were inventions of the devil, and that, like Eve’s apple, 
they were best let alone ; she believed in the instincts, 
but feared the very word reason. 

“ Oh ! this religion of the body,” was Lough- 
borough’s relief, in words, as he sat on Lou-i-sy’s 
porch that afternoon. “ Why do people cling to dis- 
ease ? If they held on to virtue or to health with such 
terrible tenacity, we should see a race of heroes and 
demigods. Look at Miss Mary Jane Fontaine, — 
begging Miss Diana’s pardon, — with her, diseases are 
angels in disguise, — God’s own ministers. Look at 
Miss Sarah Jane Jackson, a sensible woman and a 
kindly ; with her, diseases are pets to be tickled with a 
patent medicine.” 


DIANA FONTAINE 


199 


“Yes, she carries her neuralgia about with her as 
the Newport ladies do their pugs,” threw in Diana. 
Loughborough, still on the warpath against the stu- 
pidities encountered in his practice, continued, “And 
there’s Vanessa Spangler, the dumbest of them all. 
Disease is her bosom friend. If she could forget her- 
self for one little twenty-four hours, she’d mount on 
the upward wave towards recovery.” 

Of course, Dr. Fawnystawk pooh-poohed Lough- 
borough’s hopefulness, calling it the ravings of a 
visionary. 

“ But, my dear sir,” cried Loughborough, “ could I 
ever have cured a patient without the hope of doing 
so ? Hope gives wings to resolution ; ’tis the blossom- 
ing flower of energy. Why, it is one of the Christian 
graces ; it is your bounden duty to acquire it.” 

“ Is it in the Bible ?” asked Lou-i-sy, eager always 
to see her lover proved right. 

“ Bring it here,” was his answer. 

It was brought, and he read in his deep voice, enriched 
with the beautiful European vowel-sound of a, “And 
now abideth faith, hope, charity ; these three.” 

“But the greatest of these is charity,” half whis- 
pered Lou-i-sy. 

Diana, charming young heathen, murmured some- 
thing about Pandora’s box ; while old Fawnystawk, 
shutting his ears to the words of holy writ, and regard- 
ing disease as an institution not to be done away with, 
even in imagination, grunted out, “ When a man ails, 
the Lord Almighty means the drugs to do the business. 
He sent the sickness, and He sent the drugs to cure 
with. Hope and that is mighty fine talking, but you 


200 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


can’t rub a rheumatic arm with hope. You want 
opodeldoc for that.” 

Loughborough laughed. He did not care to pursue 
the argument, but he asked, with a quizzical wrinkle 
about his mouth, “ When a man or a woman lacks will- 
power, what drug will you give them, Dr. Fawny- 
stawk.” . 

“ Red-oak bark, son-in-law,” replied Dr. Fawny- 
stawk, bringing his hand down with a rap on the arm 
of his wooden chair. “ Red-oak bark will tone up 
every part of you ; it will tune you to concert-pitch ; 
it will lift you as high as your muscles will let you 
go.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk was gratified with his own logic • 
but he was hurt at Loughborough always having the 
two ladies on his side. 

Loughborough was out of the county for several 
days, during which time Dr. Fawnystawk stole a 
march on him, and paid one or two professional visits 
to Miss Spangler. He happened there, one day, with 
several countrymen, who had dropped in to pay their 
respects to the Spanglers and to ask how Vanessy was. 
The measurings of red-oak bark, valerian, et csetera, 
were got through with by the doctor as quickly as 
possible, that he might sit down in the outer room and 
enjoy a social hour while dinner was preparing. Con- 
versation, like the coy damsel she is in Hessian neigh- 
borhoods, required some coaxing at first. 

“ Good-morning, Mr. Winker,” Dr. Fawnystawk led 

off. 

“ Ugh !” was the return-lead from Mr. Winker, 
who, tilting his chair on its two hind-legs, balanced 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


201 


rather dangerously, surveying at the same time his knees, 
each of which showed a square patch of bright blue, set 
thereon, probably, by the tender hands of his spouse. 

“How do you feel this morning, Mr. Winker?” 

“ Ugh !” was the reiterated grunt, and Mr. Winker 
refused to let go the observation of his knees. Dr. 
Fawnystawk declined to be vanquished, so he turned 
to the next gentleman, Billy Funk. 

“Well, Funk, how’s the girls? I never see them 
about. Be they domestic ?” 

Such interest on the part of the family physician was 
only natural, seeing that he had helped these two young 
ladies to enter the world. 

Funk brightened ; he was at home on the subject of 
his own family, and he was grateful that he could feel 
the flow upon his lips. “Yes, doctor, my daughter 
Betsy she are domestic ; my daughter Marthy she are 
a very fat gal.” 

It may be that the juxtaposition of ideas in this 
phrase did not happen according to the rules of logic ; 
but the words stated facts, and that was sufficient. 

“ Come, Dr. Fawnystawk,” said Mrs. Spangler, 
thrusting her head in at the room door, “ set down and 
have a bite.” 

“ What ! time to eat a’ready ? Why, bless my soul, 
if there ain’t the dinner-horn.” Dr. Fawnystawk con- 
cealed his eagerness behind the veil of reserve ; for he 
liked wonderfully well to taste other folks’ middlin’, 
sometimes. Mrs. Spangler, looking at her bashful 
visitors with an invitingly scarlet face, repeatedly 
pressed her hospitality with strict impartiality. “ Come, 
doctor; come, Mr. Winker; come, Mr. Funk.” 


202 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Winker sidled towards the dining-room with a 
sheepish glance at the pleasant tableau presented by the 
well-spread table. Funk hesitated, with the words, — 

“ I haven’t no ’casion, marm.” 

“ Take a seat, Funk, take a seat,” cried Mr. 
Spangler, with pre-prandial jocularity, and motioning 
towards a deal chair, “ I’d rather feed six hungry 
men than one as hasn’t no ’casion.” He laughed a 
dry, spent little laugh at his own facetiousness, and 
Funk laughed, too. And why ? He had spied on a 
side-table the biggest watermelon he had ever laid his 
light-blue goggle eyes on. 

Mrs. Spangler was unwearying in her hospitality. She 
plied her guests with such questions as these : “ Have 
some fruit, Mr. Winker? A glass of sweet milk or 
sour-r, Mr. Funk? Cold or hot slaw, Dr. Fawny- 
stawk?” In the Hessian menu, the dish commonly 
called kohl-slaw is subjected to degrees of difference in 
temperature, as cold, hot, or warm, slaw. “Have 
wheat or corn bread ?” pursued the lady of the house, 
keeping off flies by means of a bunch of peacock- 
feathers and offering a dish whereon were heaped pones 
of corn-meal bread. “ Corn-bread for me. I can’t go 
back on my raisin’, though your wheat loaf is as likely 
as any I see hereabouts,” answered Dr. Fawnystawk ; 
while Billy Funk, suiting the action to the word, cut 
open one of the pones and set free a cloud of steam. 
What a nice hot bed for the lump of butter which he 
immediately proceeded to tuck away in the recesses of 
the steaming corn-meal. The sight alone made his 
mouth water ; but the touch, when a moment later he 
stowed an enormous wedge of the same into his cavern- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


203 


ous jaws, made his eyes water most unpleasantly. An 
interval of agony ensued, during which time the sufferer, 
poor Billy Funk, tossed the infernal mouthful to and 
fro from the inner wall of one cheek across to the inner 
wall of the other, opening and shutting his mouth at 
the same time, to let in a draught of air and institute 
the process of cooling ; a potation of milk now and 
then added the douche necessary to achieve this cool- 
ing and enable the victim at last to swallow the bread, 
and thus ease himself of his pains. Billy Funk was 
not the only sufferer. Mr. Spangler had helped him- 
self likewise, inadvertently, and the heat of the corn- 
bread in his mouth imparted a dash of heat to the 
words of reproach he addressed to his wife as soon as he 
could articulate. 

“ Mrs. Spangler, you ought to have more prudence 
than help to this hot corn-bread, and Sally (referring 
to a daughter of eleven) ought to had more prudence 
than to put this hot corn-bread on the table, and Bets 
(referring to the colored woman in the kitchen) she 
ought to had more prudence than to have baked it so.” 
With Mr. Spangler, prudence and her child, economy, 
were his cardinal virtues. 

When Dr. Fawnystawk returned home that after- 
noon, Lou-i-sy chid him for interfering with Lough- 
borough’s patient. To her mind, her father was only 
Paw or Pappy ; while Loughborough was “ the doc- 
tor,” in whose prerogative she placed implicit belief. 

“ Can’t a man pay a friendly visit, Lou-i-sy, on a 
young ’ooman as he helped bring into the world ? I 
were keen to know, too, what that chap were a-doing 
with Yanessy ; for I tell you, Lou-i-sy, child, she’s 


204 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


bad off, bad off ; and no drops have been prescribed 
for her, no powders, and nothing. Why he’s set her 
to reading books. He might as well drive her crazy 
at once and be done with it.” 

Lou-i-sy shook her head, but her fair face showed no 
wavering line ; the repose of perfect trust preserved 
each feature in the unison of an almost beatific gentle- 
ness. That books should be administered as an anti- 
dote for physical ailments seemed to her an enigma ; 
nevertheless, unlike her father, she believed that Lough- 
borough could supply the clew to the enigma if he 
wished. 

“ The doctor will be put out,” was all she said. 

Loughborough was put out when he came back, and 
he said so. “ Either I must attend Miss Spangler, Dr. 
Fawny stawk, or you must. I am ready to resign her 
to you at once.” His brows were drawn angrily, his 
nostrils distended ; he chewed the ends of his mustache 
that he might not say too much. What a provoking, 
hard-headed, tough-feeling codger, old Fawnystawk 
was, to be sure, sitting there spitting out tobacco-juice 
and maxims all in the same squirt. 

“ Wisdom don’t always speak in Latin and Greek. 
What did you set a weak-brained young ’ooman to 
reading books for ? It’s enough to . make her act 
queerer than she’s been a-doing, yet.” 

“ A man may give advice, but he cannot give con- 
duct. The girl’s disease has to be helped by mind and 
will more than by anything else ; functional disorders 
are surmounted by this and suitable hygiene.” 

A look from Loughborough’s betrothed had modi- 
fied his first impulse to anger. Where was the use of 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


205 


being angry with a pig-headed old gentleman ? Pig- 
headedness was the quality he had been fighting with 
the alacrity of a St. George ever since his residence in 
Pughtown. But, alas ! pig-headedness is not confined 
to Pughtown ; it runs on trotters abroad throughout the 
world. What Loughborough had less patience with than 
anything else, was the materialism which pervades the 
medical fraternity. They give iron and quinine for broken 
hearts ; morphine or chloral hydrate for weakened brains ; 
to please fools, they commit sinful errors; to provide 
present relief, they insure future pain. They forbid 
mental exercise to people who are suffering from exces- 
sive emotionality more than from anything else ; they 
disregard the co-operation of the moral with the physi- 
cal nature ; their advice is general and vague, never 
particular and individual. Why? Because they do 
not take the time to study the patient and the cause of 
his disorder. The practice is reducible to a formula ; 
and the majority of physicians take refuge from their 
ignorance of the profession of medicine in the greater 
definiteness offered by surgery. They regard the 
human body as a machine, and the profession as an 
exact science, like mathematics or chemistry. Such 
were Loughborough’s opinions, and to war against 
carelessness and hasty diagnosing was a part of his 
mission. 

“ I will never have so large a number of patients 
that I cannot be personally interested in each one,” he 
said ; and Dr. Fawnystawk, between tobacco spurts 
and pooh-poohs, retorted, — 

“ Keep all you have and get all you can is the only 
way to become a rich man, son-in-law.” 

18 


206 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ A rich man, yes ; if that is my ambition. I work 
and get money ; but I do not work to get money only. 
Money is a good servant, but a bad master ; and it is 
only where honor grows mercenary that money grows 
honorable.” 

“ What is your ambition, son-in-law ?” 

“My ambition is, not palliation, nor amelioration, 
but cure, so far as it is possible.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk thrust out his chin and disgorged 
himself of a sodden mass of tobacco. “Well, there’s 
no use talking ; Lou-i-sy here can tell you that young 
cocks shun the coops.” 

Lou-i-sy knew this to be a fact, but she did not 
understand the application ; so she looked in a be- 
wildered way from father to lover, and from lover 
back to father, fearful lest her too great knowledge of 
roosters and their ways might betray her into some 
disloyalty. Her father often set traps, but she refused 
to enter them, usually, with a discretion which char- 
acterized her, despite her slow-mindedness and igno- 
rance on many points. 

Several weeks later she and Diana were told by 
Loughborough that Miss Spangler had gone to 
Shenandoah, and that he hoped to see her finally 
restored. 

“ But I thought she would not be gotten out of the 
house; how did you manage?” asked Lou-i-sy, in admi- 
ration of her lover’s success. 

“She said she couldn’t move across the threshold 
of the front door ; that something was the matter with 
the muscles of her knee. She fooled them all ; they 
brought her the water she drank, — everything. They 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


207 


couldn’t get her to move. I tried several experiments 
and failed. So, one morning, I stopped in and said, 
‘Come, Miss Vanessa, jump into my buggy and have 
a drive.’ She shook her head. Then I said , 1 You had 
better come. McElroy is going to get a lift in Win- 
ker’s wagon to Winchester, where he’s bound for his 
holiday. He hasn’t seen you for so long, he wants a 
chance of saying how-d’y.’ She looked up quick as 
thought, rose from her chair and walked straight to 
my buggy. You see she had to have a motive.” 

Diana pricked up her ears, and asked, “ What did 
she do when she saw Captain McElroy?” 

Loughborough laughed, dryly. “ She didn’t see 
him that time. I took her a little drive, and asked 
her how she would like a walk sometimes ; she de- 
clared that to walk was impossible. When we got to 
the edge of the creek, I contrived to tilt the buggy, so 
that she thought she was going to be upset.” 

“ Poor thing ! Was she frightened ?” 

“Out of her wits, I assure you. I told her the 
wheel had given way, and that it meant a broken neck 
to ride another step. What did she do but bound out 
of the buggy by herself and skip on towards home, as 
briskly as you please.” 

Diana laughed at this confession of ruse, but Lou- 
i-sy’s glance was one of reproach. Hers was no mind 
for stratagem. In answer to her glance, Loughborough 
said, — 

“ She has the physical power, Lou-i-sy ; the direct- 
ing of it by an adequate motive is to her a neces- 
sity ; if she cannot supply the motive, some one else 
must.” 


208 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


Miss Fawnystawk appeared partly satisfied, while 
Diana threw in, — 

“Is it not strange that Vanessa Spangler, with those 
great red cheeks of hers, should be such a reed in the 
blast?” 

“ It is violently red-cheeked women who are under 
the dominion of their blood,” answered Loughborough. 
“ Nerves give power of resisting, mind adds the quality 
of endurance. Now you, Miss Fontaine, have little 
color, little flesh; you quiver with nerve; but I 
would stake you against six Vanessa Spanglers for 
power and endurance.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

Diana’s stay at Cloverdale was drawing to a close ; 
but, before leaving, she and Miss Fawnystawk were to 
have a day of shopping in Winchester. First, how- 
ever, there was work to be done at home ; for Lou-i-sy 
was far too prudent a housekeeper to be “up and 
away,” as she said, before casting her eye upon the 
morrow’s meals, as well as upon every nook and cranny 
in her tidy house. “ Sun-up,” on the day intended for 
this shopping expedition, found her broom whisking 
about diligently. When Loughborough passed through 
the hall, whistling, the dogs springing at his heels, she 
stood in the summer dining-room too much absorbed 
to notice him. This summer dining-room was a capa- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


209 


cious, matted chamber, shuttered into a dim green twi- 
light ; and Lou-i-sy, beside a large table in the centre 
of the room, hovered over a row of delicately-fluted, 
palely-brown pies. Loughborough caught a glimpse 
of a dish of honey too, a loaf of cake, and a huge yel- 
low dish which contained, no doubt, the sugared re- 
mains of some summer fruit. This was no time to 
intrude, so he went on his way to the front door, which 
stood open. A sharp though hot wind was sowing the 
grass-plot of the garden and the planks of the porch 
with rose-petals ; and, as this carpet of blossoms must 
be gotten rid of before the prudent Lou-i-sy could 
think of going townwards, Diana stood without, 
venting her youthful impatience by means of broom- 
flutterings. 

There is nothing in the world more becoming to the 
form of man or beast than industry. The nest-build- 
ing bird, the honey-filching bee, the nut-cracking 
squirrel, the munching cow, the cream-churning dam- 
sel, the bread-making woman, the wood-chopping man, 
— all these and more attest to the beauty as well as the 
dignity of occupation. Loughborough stood quietly 
for a few moments watching her handle the broom. 
She did not abate her occupation, but glanced up at 
him with a frank smile of good-morning. McElroy’s 
eyes, of drowsy, velvety depths, half drooped under 
pendulous lids, had often touched her person, through 
the sense of vision, with an intensity which made her 
painfully self-conscious. Loughborough’s glances, on 
the contrary, cooled. His view was large ; he saw 
more, even, than he appeared to be seeing. He did not 
trouble a woman with his look, and yet no detail of 
o 18 * 


210 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Diana’s pretty assiduity with her broom was lost, and 
her wholesomeness pleased him. While patting the 
dog, he noted the swing of her skirts over the firm yet 
slim, girlish hips, and their break into ripples along 
the line of the limbs. A smile twitched upward the 
corners of his mouth, giving the savor of salt to his 
words, pronounced by a voice with a chirp in it, — 

“ Did you ever hear the adage, Miss Fontaine, that 
( While the tall maid is stooping, the little one hath 
swept the house’ ?” 

“Do not contrast me with Lou-i-sy, Dr. Lough- 
borough ; there is no point in which she does not 
eclipse me. Her foresight has given me the very fever 
of energy,” she answered, laughing, and leaning upon 
her broom-handle. “We cannot go to town, you 
know, until she has finished baking pies for to-morrow, 
— and for all next week, who knows? After w T hich 
they will be set out on the table in the summer dining- 
room and covered with a clean table-cloth ; no in-, 
trusion even for flies.” 

“ Nor for hungry men ?” 

Miss Fontaine shook her head. To her, Lou-i-sy’s 
housekeeping was a genre picture which might elicit 
a smile of criticism as well as a grain of approbation. 
Her smile was quite transparent to the sarcasm behind 
it. Loughborough gave a quick little laugh. He was 
not one of the men with whom the work is everything, 
the human being nothing. He reverenced his be- 
trothed, though her superstitions, both of pantry and 
church, he smiled at ; the overcoming of them would 
be gradual work, he knew. 

“ Do you know, Miss Fontaine, the devil will not 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


211 


show himself on Apple-Pie Ridge, for fear of being 
put into a pie.” 

“ I thought you considered that either he or one of 
his imps must be hidden under every piece of top-crust 
ever baked, Dr. Loughborough, and that your crusade 
was against imp and pie ; if so, then Apple-Pie Ridge 
is a fine field for the exploits of the knight, Sir 
Launce,” she courtesied, playfully. 

“No knight is ever successful unless some lady 
espouses his cause. Will you assist me, Miss Fontaine, 
in my crusade against the inevitable, indigestible, ini- 
quitous pie?” 

To this spirited appeal, Diana shook out an emphatic 
negative. She was a young woman with an appetite 
and a digestion rarely encountered. Having thriven 
on Hessian pastries and Hessian dumplings, she had no 
fault to find with them. She was on good terms with 
the world when it accepted her, and on excellent terms, 
it must be added, with both stomach and conscience. 

“ Apple-Pie Ridge ! The very name has power to 
stir me this soon after breakfast. It melts in your 
mouth, like one of Lou-i-sy’s high-flown puff-pastry 
tarts.” 

Thus defying the world of pies, she leaned upon her 
broom-handle and rested her eyes, grave with ponder- 
ing, upon her companion. Their color, like the dark 
markings of an agate, penetrated. A man without a 
superstition is a man without a shadow. Lough- 
borough’s superstition had been that the eyes colored 
for truth were blue ones. “ Made for earnest granting, 
taking color from the skies, can Heaven’s truth be 
wanting?” Now, however, he felt this superstition 


212 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


break like a brittle glass. He caught himself warming 
into sudden, unspoken praise of gray eyes flecked with 
brown. In the midst of a rush of heat, he was con- 
scious of saying inwardly, “ Hazel-nuts, and sweeter 
than their kernels.” The little flurry was interrupted 
the next moment by Diana, who asked, still leaning 
upon her broom-handle, — 

“ Apple-Pie Kidge ! Pray, what suggested the 
name ? Do you know ?” 

Loughborough did know some rustic anecdote, which 
he told with a business-like precision, turning, as he 
did so, from these gray eyes and looking down into the 
softly-brown, loving ones of Dr. Fawny stawk’s collie. 

“ Before the days of steam, the people about here 
used to haul their produce to Baltimore in wagons. 
The wagoners stopped often to rest and feed upon this 
ridge ; and, it being a famous apple-country, they fared 
upon apple-pies. These were praised by the travellers, 
until there arose a rivalry among the housekeepers of 
the country-side, each striving to make a better and a 
larger pie than her neighbor. One woman, a widow, 
succeeded in getting her pies so large that a whimsical 
wagoner once stopped the wheel of his cart with it, 
saying that it would do better for scotching than chew- 
ing. When this good fellow came back from Balti- 
more after selling his produce, he married the widow 
who made the pie. It is said that he forbade her from 
ever after making one that should exceed the reason- 
able size. He was a smart man ; his name, Peter 
Fawnystawk, Lou-i-sy’s grandfather. But this tale 
will hardly be romantic enough for your taste, Miss 
Fontaine?” 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


213 


“ Romantic ?” exclaimed Diana; “ it is exquisite, 
delightfully romantic ! Peter Fawnystawk — wagoner 
— a widow — a pie — a love-affair. The story is com- 
plete.” Miss Fontaine hummed, wheeling about with 
fantastic steps, “ ‘ Sing a song a sixpence, a pocketful 
of rye ; four and twenty black birds baked in a pie/ 
You see a pie can be a symbol.” 

She looked up, letting her eyes rove to the tree-tops, 
which showed through them glimpses of a pale, hot, 
blue sky. Her imagination was tripping up a stair- 
case of symbols to the unimagined beyond. Lough- 
borough had the benefit of her entire outward person- 
ality without being called into question by the eyes, 
which so often play the part of judiciary. An hour of 
a sunny morning on the front porch of a farm-house 
may throw its shadow upon more than one dial-plate. 
The sharp summer breeze, parting the trees and tossing 
the vines, mingled sunbeam with shadow in a most 
maddening way upon the planks of the piazza, upon 
the grass, and upon the brick- work of the house. Only 
nature could disentangle that maze of black and gold. 
The intermittent puffs of air ruffled the hair on the 
dog’s back and tried to break the evenness of Miss 
Fontaine’s thick brown locks ; but they stood the test 
well. Hair gives all the finishing touches to the sym- 
metry of the human form. There were no waves, and 
but few short strands in the sweep of her shadowed 
hair, smooth and abundant on the temples, curved into 
a suberb loop at the back of her head. But it was not 
the hair nor the coloring which at this moment at- 
tracted the young physician’s attention. His study of 
human nature had never been from motives of curiosity 


214 ♦ 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


and entertainment, but from those dictated by a deep 
purpose. Dissection with him was simply the means 
to healing or helping. 

Why do men write about eyes, complexions, not 
chins? The statue is eyeless, complexionless ; yet the 
statue reveals the ethical more than the picture. 
Would you cast the abstract virtues into bronze, cut 
them upon marble, or delineate them with colors? 
The chin, in a degree, is the corner-stone of the human 
temple. It shows how much the material is restrained 
by the spiritual : this is the clue to a man’s history. 
The eyebrows are the actresses’ feature ; the eyes, the 
poets’, — the latter being the fountain-head of the emo- 
tions. Consult the nose for the critic, the brow for the 
statesman, the chin and lower extremity of jaw for the 
general. Some such survey of the general history of 
features flashed through Loughborough’s brain while 
gazing at the dainty little chin of Diana lifted plead- 
ingly ; it indicated less of self-restraint than of self- 
immolation to the human element. 

Pose and revery were interrupted by Miss Fawny- 
stawk, who evinced surprise that Diana also was not 
ready. “ I shall be ready before the carriage is at the 
block,” was her answer, as she disappeared within the 
door. Loughborough cleared the steps with a couple 
of bounds and went in search of the carriage. Ser- 
vants were scarce in these days and in this part of 
the country, and he was going to drive the ladies to 
town. Lou-i-sy’s dress, as Loughborough handed her 
in, rattled with a cleanliness that was audible; her 
bonnet was a trifle over-fine; but there was always 
that about Lou-i-sy which appealed pleasantly to the 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


215 


eye ; a whiteness and feather-softness of throat and 
cheek which made you indulgent to her crudenesses, 
and which made you think of her with an inward 
caress. Loughborough patted her hand with some- 
thing of this caress as she took her seat, and she laid 
the other hand upon his shoulder with an expression 
all benignance and tenderness. This was the first 
demonstration that Diana had ever seen pass between 
these two, and, strange to say, it hurt her. When the 
two ladies were placed, Loughborough, fascinating in 
his ugliness, as Diana admitted, sprang into the front 
seat and took up the reins. The four miles which lay 
betwixt Cloverdale and Winchester were filled with 
her chatter. She talked to make Loughborough look 
around, for he was silent ; but the conversation had to 
be kept up, and was kept up, mainly, by the ladies, — 
Diana, with her brilliant paragraphs ; Lou-i-sy, with 
her sedate little foot-notes. Though Lou-i-sy’s voice 
was pleasant, there was a burr in her r’s which smote 
the ear like an echo of the Pennsylvania Dutch from 
which her tongue had descended ; but Diana’s words 
sailed along upon the stream of talk, smooth and fair, 
as swans. Her dissyllables were melodious doublets; 
her trisyllables, rhythmic, — the whole a tuneful utter- 
ance so mind-satisfying that after it one would hardly 
care for a song. 

Despite the honeyed speech pouring sweetly upon 
his ear, Loughborough’s brows were knitted. His 
tongue was not unloosened until Lou-i-sy, getting out 
of the carriage on the outskirts of Winchester to see 
Cousin ’Becca Fawnystawk, said, “ Take Dianny all 
over town, doctor ; drive her a little bit on the Clarke 


216 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


and Martinsburg pikes. Oh, and show her the gardens 
do ; the roses there are such beauties.” 

“And when will we see you again, Lou-i-sy ?” asked 
Diana, changing her position to the front seat in order 
to be more companionable with Loughborough. 

“In an hour or so, I reckon. I’ve to go to the 
green-grocer’s and to the hardware man’s ; so don’t 
hurry. We’ll meet at the dry-goods store on Main 
Street. ‘ The doctor* knows. You know, doctor?” 

Lou-i-sy shook out skirts, which gave an answering 
rattle, smoothed her hat-strings, turned up the cedar- 
path that led to the house, and was lost to view. 
Loughborough fluttered his reins and the rockaway 
started on its tour of exploration. Diana made the 
most of the sight-seeing, for this was her first visit to 
Winchester. “Here are the breast- works thrown up 
during the war,” or “Here is the house where that 
arch-tyrant Milroy quartered himself when the town 
was in Yankee lines,” or “ Here is the Indian Spring ; 
if you drink its waters you will be sure to come back 
to Winchester before you die,” or “Here is the old 
Sensenny mansion, which owns a ghost,” or “This is 
the house in which the belle of Winchester lives ; here 
are the gardens, Lou-i-sy ’s paradise.” Such were bits 
of information given by Loughborough, who was con- 
scious of a play of very mobile features under the 
nodding brim of a black straw hat garlanded with 
artificial roses. 

At the gardens she clamored for flowers ; she must 
have a bouquet ; Loughborough must , get out, too, and 
help her select. “ The bouquet is for Lou-i-sy, you 
know,” she said, and she made him do a good deal of 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


217 


pretty fooling before she had done with him that 
morning. “Lou-i-sy lent you to me, Dr. Lough- 
borough. She will not be ready for hours, I know. 
She has coffee to get, and sugar and a rolling-pin. 
Heaven knows what all.” 

Of the gardener she asked a thousand questions, and 
took views of the Blue Ridge from different points. 
The dry-as-dust old Scotch gardener was pleased to 
answer questions brilliantly put; and he ended by 
presenting to the young lady a bunch of his choicest 
roses, with his compliments, and an attempt at a 
courtly bow which, by contrast with his figure, nig- 
gardly in allowance of flesh, was humorously grotesque. 
When Diana was seated in the rockaway again, she had 
a lapful of white and lavender flowers for Lou-i-sy, 
together with packages of roots and slips, and her 
own bosom full of great, tall pink and crimson roses 
that spread themselves with that imperious splendor 
of hue which is of itself a kind of magnetism. Even 
Loughborough was made to wear a nosegay of some 
aromatic herb. 

“I love scent, v said Diana, taking a deep breath, 
then applying first one flower to her nostrils for a sniff, 
afterwards another. “ My mother was devoted to 
artificial perfumes, — distillations, essences, extracts, 
powders. She spent a great deal of her pin-money 
in sachet-bags and colognes. I cannot endure such 
perfumes; but I love the natural ones. They have 
almost as much meaning for me as music or painting.” 

Loughborough, as we have said before, enjoyed the 
raptures of this young woman’s healthful organism. 
He said, with a glance at the daintily intoxicated tip 


218 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


of her nose as it titillated first one flower, then another, 
of the bouquet she held in her hands, — 

“ Smell is a sense much developed in the brute, but 
rudimentary in man ; a dog dreams in smells, no doubt, 
as we dream in visions or sounds.” 

“ I am a hound for keenness of scent,” laughed 
Diana, crushing a bit of myrtle against her upper lip. 
“ I smelled yellow jessamine once in a hot-house ; it is 
not so sweet as it is wild and sad. There is a strain 
of melancholy in its odor that penetrates me like the 
minor chords in music. Do you know I should like 
to wear yellow jessamine in my hair when I listen to 
Chopin ? Do you think me silly ?” she asked, with a 
sudden bend of her head. 

Loughborough did not answer at first ; he looked 
thoughtful. “By no means, Miss Fontaine; but this 
excessive refinement of the senses requires a wonderful 
amount of reason and will-power, you must remember, 
to overbalance it. I was thinking, too, that if successive 
generations increase their refinement continuously, they 
would after a while develop a new sense ; and that in 
the course of time a new species might be evolved.” 

“You believe in evolution. I heard it much dis- 
cussed in New York, but it is hard to trace. I heard 
many lectures upon it ; but is not development spas- 
modic instead of continuous.” 

“Just so. You have caught the idea exactly. Sci- 
entific men generally want to make it a regular piece of 
mechanism, which it is not ; aud are wildly alert for 
missing links.” 

When they reached the Shawnee Spring, Diana got 
out to have a taste of its fabled waters. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


219 


u Do you know, I like the Valley now. I thought 
I would not at first. I shall drink, that I may come 
back before I die ; that is, if I have to leave it.” 

“ What has made you like it here ?” asked Lough- 
borough, kneeling beside the spring in the long thick 
grass. His voice expressed unusual interest, but his 
head was drooped toward the clear, deep pool, because 
he was dipping water into the tincup, fastened by a 
chain to the smooth flat stone that formed the curb on 
one side. 

“ You have had something — a great deal — to do 
with it.” 

“ And McElroy ?” Loughborough let the sparkling 
water flow in, then out of, the cup. 

“ Not Captain McElroy. He might interest me in 
himself, but not in anything else. He would make a 
place attractive only so far as it was his environment. 
Do you understand ?” 

Diana had to lower her head in order to drink from 
the cup, now filled, for the chain attached to its handle 
was a short one ; her knees dipped down into the bed 
of ferns, and she bent her head also poolward. She 
saw first her own face distinctly imaged in the water, 
afterwards Loughborough’s. The clear water over 
brown earth made a revelation : it gave to his dark, 
weather-beaten features a look she had never seen upon 
them before. An earnestnesss, an intensity of gaze 
which surprised her into a sudden consciousness of new 
feelings. Had he ever looked so at Lou-i-sy ? Diana 
believed not. It must be the water, — refraction, she 
supposed, — and a pair of troubled orbs met Lough- 
borough’s in the darkling pool. The next instant a 


220 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


rose was snapped from its stem and tossed into the 
water to disturb the smooth expanse and shut away the 
tell-tale picture. The crimson globe of the full-blown 
rose floated slowly and heavily upon the water’s sur- 
face. When Diana finally looked away from it and 
stood up, it was to perceive Loughborough at her side, 
also standing and holding towards her the cup brim- 
ming with water. 

“I don’t believe I care for any now,” she said, 
turning away abashed, yet fascinated. “ I think we 
must hurry back to Lou-i-sy. She will wonder what 
has become of us.” 

“ Yes.” Loughborough’s voice was gentle, but a 
trifle chill, as he insisted, “ I knew we were late when 
we came here, but you must drink some of the water 
now, Miss Fontaine ; for, though you will certainly 
leave us some day, you must come back again to the 
Valley and’ see Lou-i-sy a happy wife ; that will be 
worth coming for.” 

Whatever momentary self-surrender there had been, 
it was over now, and Diana felt that she must have 
mistaken the darkly tender glance she saw reflected in 
the pool. She turned to take the cup, but, instead, 
overturned it with the abruptness of the movement. 

“See what you have done, Miss Fontaine! You 
will leave us, and you will not come back. Is that the 
way you are going to do ?” 

His tone was kind, but careless. He said to himself 
the temptations of this world are in proportion to one’s 
powers. It is because she is unguarded that others 
are so with her; but whatever I might feel, I am in- 
capable of treachery. He helped her into the carriage, 


DIANA FONTAINE. 221 

and the wheels soon clattered over the cobble-stones of 
Main Street between a double line of paltry shops. 

“ These cobble-stones could tell some gallant tales of 
the kind that you like, Miss Fontaine,” said Lough- 
borough, not wishing his companion to give herself up to 
thoughtful silence. 

“ Of Milroy and Banks ?” she answered, languidly. 

a Yes, and of others whom you know well. When 
Winchester was in northern lines, Ashby, McElroy, and 
your Uncle Grat Fontaine rode down this street on 
their black horses, stopped in front of the hotel, waved 
their plumed hats about their heads, and cried, ‘ Hur- 
rah for the Confederacy’ three times, and then galloped 
out of town unmolested, though the whole place was 
blue with Yankees, who thought, of course, that it was a 
surprise, and that thousands of our men were in the rear. 
Indeed, they had not time to think at all, or they would 
never have allowed to slip a chance of capturing the 
daring Ashby. Grat says that was the only time he 
ever saw Ashby run his horse. He ran when he thought 
they bad time to recover from their surprise.” 

Loughborough, occupied with his narrative and his 
horses, did not observe the loungers along the street 
until he felt his sleeve twitched and heard his companion 
interrupt the story with this question, in a sharp, hor- 
ror-stricken voice, — 

“ Who is that, for heaven’s sake, leaning against the 
pillars of the hotel yonder ?” 

Loughborough looked up and saw a man in a tat- 
tered uniform leaning against one of the pillars that 
supported the porch of the hotel. His eyes were 
closed ; his arms hung loose; his mouth was half-open. 

19 * 


222 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


His face was pale and swollen, but its features were of 
a refined delicacy ; and bis pointed light beard and 
long loose hair gave him the air of some beautiful 
madman ; of some Greek god disguised in the clothes 
of a Confederate soldier, but asleep after a debauch. 
A shudder went through Diana’s form when she fully 
recognized Roy McElroy, beautiful in his impotency. 
The contrast between his intellectual features and his 
collapsed attitude was the very climax of pathos. 

“ What is the matter with him ?” 

“He is damned.” In answer to his companion’s 
raised eyebrow, “ Pshaw. I mean he has damned 
himself.” 

“ But what is it ?” Diana insisted, and her voice had 
overtones in it like a violin-string. 

“ An opium-dream.” 

“Is Captain McElroy an opium-eater?” 

“ Yes, ever since the war.” 

“Hideous; but you will cure him, Dr. Lough- 
borough ?” 

“ He will never be cured, Miss Fontaine.” 

“ But if some one could influence him,” she ventured. 

Loughborough shook his head. “ I do not say that 
cure is impossible ; but for McElroy, with his char- 
acteristics as a man, it is improbable. No human in- 
fluence would avail ; the only man capable of curing 
him is he himself.” 

They had driven on a little way, and then Diana 
gave her hand passively to Loughborough to be helped 
out of the carriage. He might have added other faults 
besides that of opium-eating as being characteristic of 
McElroy, but of what avail ? He preferred to give a 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


223 


silver bridge to the flying enemy. “ Poor McElroy ! 
he is a worse enemy to himself than to any one else,” 
he added, when they stood together on the curbstone. 

“ Vanessa, Spangler,” murmured Diana ; “her present 
condition is surely better than marriage with McElroy. 
One evil is bad ; multiplied, is worse.” 

“Ah, but you cannot calculate moral qualities by 
arithmetic ; may not the evils meet, clash, and one be- 
come crushed out or lessened? In a fight between 
dragons, one is killed.” Loughborough’s answer to 
Diana’s enthusiasm was a smile touched with a certain 
caustic humor, often visible in his countenance ; in an 
instant, however, he said, — 

“ Yes ; sometimes one of the dragons kills the other ; 
sometimes they produce a spawn of young ones. In 
human affairs, Miss Fontaine, we have a loophole left 
us through which hope can peer with her pretty face. 
It is this which makes me the hopeful fellow that I am. 
Still, I am often forced to admit that the probabilities 
set so strongly in a given direction that the inference 
can be foreseen almost to a certainty. Hope in the face 
of strong conviction is capable of dwindling into an 
absurd sentimentalism.” 

There was no drivelling about Diana Fontaine, and 
yet she did not dislike the word sentimentalism ; she 
put her own construction upon it and endowed it with 
her favorite qualities. Personified sentimentalism ap- 
peared to her a strictly feminine being, wearing the 
pearls of elegance strung about her like rare ornaments ; 
and it was this creature of her fancy that had helped 
to place her under McElroy’s spell. But there was 
no time for further conversation. Lou-i-sy now came 


224 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


up to them .with a flustered look and an armful of 
bundles. 

Diana had no clear remembrance of what followed 
that day except the ride home in the evening. She had 
a confused idea of going into an endless number of 
shops, and of being conducted to an ice-cream parlor, 
where the three took a chilly collation together, Lou-i-sy 
chatting about green-grocers, tin-pans, flower-seeds, 
fruit of the loom, Wamsutta cotton, which was best? 
while Loughborough discoursed upon the drugs he had 
purchased, and which he wished he would never be 
forced to use. Diana swallowed frozen-cream without 
tasting it, and kept silent. To her vision, the figure 
of McElroy was paramount. That sculpture-like 
apathy ; those heavy, half-closed lids ; that monotony 
of pallor ; that semi-paralysis of will evidenced in the 
lax limbs and drooping, yet plump, shoulder-breadth, 
as his figure, like a parody upon helplessness, leaned 
against the wooden prop of the portico belonging to 
the hotel. The utter shamelessness, the humiliating 
insensibility of that leaning figure, sickened her fresh, 
healthful imagination. She had seen this man, it must 
be remembered, glued to the belly of his racing steed ; 
had seen him playing the role of the knight and look- 
ing it ideally. She had heard him breathing out the 
sweetest emotions in the sweetest of tenors upon the 
night-air, and the words winging upwards and nestling 
about her heart. How should you chide? Not youth 
for having the weaknesses necessary to youth, but 
youth for not finally surmounting them. 

McElroy, in some fashion, had vivified history and 
romance for Miss Fontaine. She had read of courts 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


225 


of love, of chevaliers, of Arabian horsemem, of min- 
strels, in her text-books ; but she had seen them all 
united in the person of McElroy. He had possessed 
some charms ; she had endowed him with a thousand 
new ones. Now she felt as if she were the victim of a 
cheat ; and this idea made her heart react with violence 
against him whom she had thus endowed. Instead of 
a picturesque warrior, she had this day seen an opium- 
eater, exhibiting his cravenness and his undignified 
tatters in the very heart of the town. In her face he 
had flaunted his impotence; his vague, futile, half- 
conscious enjoyment of a condition which is the very 
climax of egotism, both bodily and mental. Despair 
would have had more promise in it than that sublimity 
of negation which she had seen. The disappointment 
which this revelation of his true self produced in her 
mind was so great that it left no room for pity ; but 
the ride home wrought a change in the current of her 
thoughts. 

The evening was beautiful. Lou-i-sy overflowed 
with satisfaction in having completed a number of 
highly useful purchases ; the horses, conscious that the 
firm macadamized road they were treading led home- 
ward, trotted cheerily, and sniffed the air laden with 
delicate thrills of clover and a myriad of field-scents 
which only their nostrils were sufficiently acute to be 
sensible of. 

Diana was not the chatter-box she had been in the 
morning; but she strove to talk. Loughborough's 
large ideas seemed to give her little ones a shake that 
did them good. “ The difference between us is that he 
is clever in almost every point, whereas I am only 
P 


226 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


clever in a few,” was the naive admission to herself. 
Very early in their acquaintance, she had discovered 
that Loughborough was a keen marksman at truth, 
hitting it with a line shaft, not stumbling upon it un- 
wittingly. His honor was not of the commercial kind ; 
he did not haggle over the virtues, cheating God with 
the smallest possible amount of them ; nor did he set 
them in a pair of scales and weigh them against gain, 
— so much honesty for so much policy ; so many ounces 
of candor, or of self-restraint, or of courage, as if these 
qualities were coffees, sugars, teas. Diana rather felt 
than knew all this; but feelings have more weight 
with young persons than knowledge. 

“ The war ! the war !” she cried half wistfully, half 
listlessly, as Loughborough snapped his whip at the 
fortifications and asked Miss Fontaine if she remem- 
bered passing them that morning. “ How the war 
colors everything in this country ! Like Turner’s 
pictures, Virginia has an atmosphere, — an historical 
one, I mean. I wish I had been here then. I should 
so like to have lived intensely. I am always jealous 
of Lou-i-sy for having had a share in such great 
events. I feel as if I had missed an experience which 
can never be made up to me quite.” 

Lou-i-sy’ s gentle, rather pensive eyes rested upon 
the great square shoulders of her betrothed, who sat 
directly in front of her. There was her event, roughly 
hewn and squarely built, near to her, so that she could 
surround him with a halo of the tenderest thoughts. 
“ It is not all women who are as lucky as Lou-i-sy,” 
was Diana’s reflection, and then she heard Lough- 
borough say, — 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


227 


“ It was an experience worth having, Miss Fontaine. 
I would not have given it for a diploma from the 
Philadelphia medical school and four years’ study in 
Germany, which I missed on account of it. The war 
marks the ending of things that were and the beginning 
of a distinctly new era.” 

“ A new era ? That at least shows progress.” 

“Not necessarily, Miss Fontaine. Five thousand 
years of history have pretty well proved that, under 
human conditions, there is no ideal government ; the 
best we can do is to approximate it.” 

Loughborough turned his head to drink peace and 
consolation from the ineffable sweetness that dwelt in 
Miss Fawnystawk’s countenance ; but his eyes in pass- 
ing were held prisoners by Diana. He leaned his 
elbow on the back of the seat, and held the reins 
loosely in order to give his attention to her. Somehow, 
she disturbed him. She would not let him be passive, 
nor at peace. Her brow was a mass of frowns induced 
by thought. Then a smile, sharp, iridescent, was un- 
sheathed from her lip ; it shot across her countenance, 
gleaming upon the young rounding of flesh and the 
sensitive eyes like a brilliant dagger. No ; he could 
not be at peace with himself ; he took refuge in gener- 
alities. 

“ You know I am a Confederate to the heart, Miss 
Fontaine. I do not approve the absolute monarchy 
which we see in Russia, nor the absolute democracy 
which those who labor to centralize power would pro- 
duce in our national government. In one case, man 
is the victim of a fatal heredity ; in the other, of the 
foolish freak of the sensation-loving populace. The 


228 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


mean between these is that federation of independent 
States established by our fathers, to be united only in 
those points which relate to general benefit. This is 
the nearest approach to individualism and to liberty ; 
this is what we Southerners fought for during the great 
straggle. It was not rex we wanted, but lex , and we 
got fex.” 

A veil dropped over Diana’s bright countenance. 
She did not understand much about States’-rights nor 
about the centralizing of power. She had felt con- 
scious, at first, that Loughborough was moving in 
unison with the rhythm of her own feelings, but now 
he had beaten away into the great sea of generalities. 
She liked to try to compel him ; but she realized that 
she was more compelled than he. She had many years 
in which to discover that the merging of self into the 
universal is the only rest which the soul can ever find. 
The beings who have experienced this are the ones who 
have foretastes of heaven. The bursting of bonds, the 
throwing off of limitations, is not in itself agony ; it 
merely makes us conscious of the agony we have before 
been enduring. The tight glove, the tight shoe yield 
the sharpest pain by removal. Lou-i-sy murmured 
something about the Yankees, — her nearest approach 
to saying anything spiteful. Loughborough declared 
that his patriotism did not extend beyond the border- 
line of Virginia. Diana broke the straight line of her 
brows and gave the ex-soldier a taste of scorn. 

“A narrow patriotism. I thought, Dr. Loughbor- 
ough, that you boasted of sympathy for the race ?” 

Loughborough did not notice the young lady’s scorn 
any more than he did the horse-fly which had settled 


DIANA FONTAINE. 229 

on the back of his shaggy gray coat ; but he volun- 
teered to explain. 

“ Philanthropy is a broad development of patriotism, 
but perfectly distinguishable from it ; for the correct 
valuation of each, judgment is needed. That is the 
ground for my quarrel with the human race, Miss 
Fontaine, — want of judgment. It has every faculty 
developed to a higher degree than that one. The end 
and aim of educators should be to train judgment ; it 
is the golden hinge on which the virtues move and 
which opens to man the gate of heaven.” 

Lou-i-sy was always gratified when the word heaven 
occurred in their conversations, for, much as she trusted 
her lover, she stood greatly in awe of his independence 
in thinking. Diana surrendered herself to what she 
called a train of thought, but which was in reality 
a series of fine-spun feelings. This delicate young 
animal had, as we have said before, done far more 
feeling than thinking, and Loughborough very often 
made her dumbly conscious of this. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Grat Fontaine was a lazy fellow. He seethed with 
inward fires, yet never brought one poor little plan to 
a parboil. His one passion was politics, yet this he 
indulged chiefly by talking. He inherited some of the 
influence and magnetism of his father, the old squire ; 
but he was without Billy’s tenacity of purpose. On 
20 


230 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


an afternoon towards the close of September, he and 
Diana sat at one end of the long, low porch at the 
Valley Farm. 

“ Uncle Grat, why don’t you go actively into poli- 
tics ?” she asked. 

“ What’s the use ?” was the savage retort, animated 
by whiffs of pipe-tobacco. “ We have to face carpet- 
baggers, scalawags, negroes. There’s no such thing as 
fair play. You must remember, Di, we’ve been beaten.” 
There was a sulky resistance in his look and posture, 
for oppression roused the devil in him. 

“But this is fatalism, Uncle Grat.” Diana had 
caught this word from Loughborough, and she loosed 
it now from her lips and sent it flying, airily, that it 
might perch on her uncle’s shoulder and give him 
the peck of disapprobation. 

Grat Fontaine tilted his chair so that he could 
lean his back against the green-painted rail of the 
porch, and from this throne of masculine independence 
surveyed his niece, whose greatest fault in his eyes 
was that she was too elegantly lady- like. He deliber- 
ately laid his pipe down upon the floor of the porch, 
rammed his hands into the pockets of his white drill- 
ing trousers, swung his head around, proudly, so as 
to take in the whole of her person, and retorted, in low 
but insistent tone, — 

“ What does a girl know about fatalism or politics ? 
What is a woman, anyhow, but a bundle of fancies, 
tiptoeing through existence to the tune of — of — 1 Money 
musk.’ ” These words were growled out contemptuously, 
“ Money musk” being the most frivolous tune he could 
think of at an instant’s notice. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


231 


Diana, from her coigne of vantage in the angle where 
the porch-rail met the house partition, surveyed her 
uncle from head to foot. What a mingling of faults 
and virtues he was, — his faults over-ripe ; his virtues 
in the green state, yet how handsome, how commanding ; 
what a splendid prime of manhood ! His hands, 
though brown as the sumach berry, had taper fingers ; 
his feet, though incased in boots with long crinkly tops 
and bespattered with the mud of field and ditch, were 
small, with arched instep. The Fontaines, every one 
of them, even in the collateral branches, were proud 
of their hands, feet, and also of their noses. Grat’s 
nose was a Grecian with full dilating nostrils, — the 
Grecian adulterated with a strain of the Asiatic, origi- 
nally. When erect, his figure was notable for its 
poise, his shoulders being thrown backward, a trifle 
defiantly, so that his chest drew the bow-shape. His 
back marked the reservoir of the secret springs of 
muscular force ; the breast, the fortress of feeling which 
commands those springs; it heaved with the deep 
breaths of resistance, or it was shaken with pent-up 
laughter. His waist — small, round, pliant — swelled 
gently at the hips and formed the pivot for the amply- 
developed lower limbs. But have a care, Grat ! you 
are good as you are ; ten pounds more of flesh would 
hurt your looks terribly. Hot talking, hard drinking, 
heavy eating for the next half-dozen years will coarsen 
those noble proportions. The facial lines, too, are in 
danger ; at present, sentiment, as well as passion, domi- 
nates and keeps in restraint the chin and lower jaw ; 
if sentiment and passion are swallowed up by the 
propensities, your face will tell the tale. Medium 


232 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


height gains distinction from spareness ; it cannot chal- 
lenge a larger weight than one hundred and sixty 
pounds avoirdupois. “ He has something of the despot 
in him/’ thought Diana, pursuing her survey, “ and a 
despot that a woman might love ; a woman might tame 
him, could the right one come along.” Lou-i-sy, — but 
she knew this was not to be. Lou-i-sy’s heart had 
found its home. “ Why does he hate us all so ?” she 
said to herself, then aloud, — 

“Your definition of man would be, I suppose, a 
bundle of facts, stalking through the universe to the tune 
of ‘ What will you do with my spondulix when your 
spondulix are gone’ ? ” She hummed the rigmarole, to 
give her parody zest ! “ Pray why, Uncle Grattan, do 

you bring shame upon women? Your mother was a 
woman, your sisters, I.” She laughed, and laid her 
hand prettily upon his arm, so that he could see 
each one of the fingers taper like his own, only white 
and pink, where his were brown and red. He puck- 
ered his mouth, trying not to look too kindly at 
her; it was the expression with which he watched 
Logan graze, or Spread Eagle spring to the snap of his 
fingers. In spite of the little elegancies which this 
democratic fellow detested, he felt towards the young 
girl as he did towards the colts, calves, lambs, and pups. 

“You are not a woman, but a witch ; that is why I 
like you now. Yes, my mother was a woman, that is 
why she used to lecture me as long as Fd listen ; my 
sister Mary Jane is a woman, that is why she whines 
at me; Miss Sarah Jane Jackson is a woman, that is 
why she dogs me. Men don’t lecture you, nor whine 
at you, nor dog your heels ; but women do. I haven’t 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


233 


any use for women; they tease, tease, tease. Your 
mother teased your father, Di ; they all do. They are 
like mosquitoes.” 

Grat snapped at a crowd of midges at that moment 
dancing in front of his eyes. His abuse was always 
too downright for Diana to be angered by it. She let 
her eyes rove, wondering if she could ever convert him 
to a better opinion of the sex. It was a little before 
sunset ; the day had been warm, but, declining, gave a 
foretaste of frost. The Run tinkled away- under its 
wooden bridge, a few rods distant, like a fairy’s cas- 
tanets ; the mint emitted a sharply-aromatic scent ; the 
wood-pile, on the other side of the paling, was haloed 
with a saffron blaze from the sun ; its posts were so 
many chunks of gold. Grat’s eyes roved, too, more 
widely, and took in the farther fields and the stock. 
He had the farmer’s power — acquired, no doubt, from 
the ruminating ox — of keeping silent by the hour to- 
gether. Diana had no such power as this ; hers was in 
speech rather than in silence. 

“ Lou-i-sy does not lecture, nor whine, nor dog, nor 
tease. Surely you can find nothing to say against her, 
and she is a woman.” 

“ Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk is a clever young woman,” 
answered Grattan, using the word clever in its provin- 
cial sense of “ kind.” u She will not do any of those 
things, but she’ll do something else, — she’ll bore, she’ll 
bore a man to death.” He took a deep breath, which 
he emitted at once through swelling nostrils, as if to 
blow far away from him the image of Lou-i-sy. 

That name, as if by magic, conjured up the figure 
of Loughborough, seen now walking through the 
20 * 


234 DIANA FONTAINE. 

sumach-bushes towards the foot-bridge spanning the 
Run. For some trifling reason, his marriage, which 
was to have taken place in the autumn, was now de- 
ferred until the following spring. Diana’s eye bright- 
ened with curiosity as she saw him approach, thinking 
of this deferment with a sharp sense of satisfaction, and 
wondering, in her heart of hearts, whether Lou-i-sy 
ever bored her lover. She did not often see Lough- 
borough, but she believed that she herself did not bore 
him. “ Be umpire,” she cried, with a voice of delight, 
as soon as he came up. “We have almost quarrelled 
about whether it is worse to be all fancy, as Uncle 
Grat says woman is, or all fact, as I say man is. 
Surely, you will not denounce us as my uncle does ; it 
is positively depressing.” 

“ Denunciation is the easiest work in the world, Miss 
Fontaine,” was the doctor’s answer, taking a seat on 
the low step. “ The clever man often finds it a luxury ; 
but, like most luxuries, it is dangerous.” Loughbor- 
ough’s speculative glance rested upon Fontaine, who, 
tilted backward in his chair, showed an expression 
half-froward, half-quizzical. 

“ Dog-on your would-be gallantry, Loughborough. 
Are you going to sneak out in that way because there’s 
a woman present?” 

“ Your uncle here, Miss Fontaine, boasts that he has 
never been led by a woman ; but he is very easily 
prodded by the imp, Perversity.” 

“ Whether better — woman or imp ?” laughed Diana. 

“ He’s a rare, good abuser ; the best in the State of 
Virginia.” 

“ Yes, I know. I know none better; for the last 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


235 


hour he has been abusing me for everything you can 
think of, — teeth, eyelashes, gowns. I might help the 
last ; but how can I help being a woman ?” 

Her appeal had fervor. Loughborough gave a short, 
dissyllabic laugh before answering, “ You are lucky if 
his objections were chiefly against the fleshly garment 
and not the real self.” Both men glanced at the teeth 
of squirrel whiteness that showed behind her smile ; at 
the eyelashes that gave a frisky sort of fire to her eyes ; 
at the gown, — simple, sober, well fitting, — which re- 
vealed the suppleness of her person. If there were 
strictures to be passed, they were not to be passed by 
Loughborough. His thought did not dwell long, how- 
ever, upon these superficial endowments. In the 
silence that followed, he thought of the real self that 
lay behind the fleshly garment. He was a man that 
liked riddles. Here was a girl with none of the harsh- 
ness that goes with the grand virtues, and yet one 
capable of rising to climaxes. She was the unripe 
fruit of a very precious species. It is not well to 
mature too quickly, — a quick ripening makes an early 
rotting. Beware of the youth who leaps into wisdom 
in his teens ; by the time the mustache hides the shape 
of his lip, he will become a pedagogue, a formalist, a 
human machine of some kind; he will narrow down 
into a frightfully pinching groove. In human nature 
the senses must first play their part, the imagination 
must delude ; for the animal has to purchase experi- 
ence; this last is not the gift of the gods. In due 
time maturity will assert itself, and the gradual ripen- 
ing makes the richer prime. Diana had a good deal 
of surface brilliancy, but Loughborough had gotten 


236 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


glimpses of depths beneath, by means of the sudden 
tear, the irradiating smile. He recognized that she 
was neither good nor useful, nor simple, like Lou-i-sy, 
but still that she had a hundred possibilities to Lou- 
i-sy’s one. In short, she was a riddle, and Lough- 
borough liked riddles. Lou-i-sy, in the course of years, 
might grow more tolerant, even more submissive ; but 
Diana ? her life was to be a record of change, with every 
few years a new era. He had discovered that he had 
power to stir a different Diana in her from any the 
others had seen. Did she, in return, have power with 
him ? If this question occurred, it was not now an- 
swered. This much he knew, that he set her to think- 
ing, she him to feeling. 

When with Lou-i-sy, the two sat down in the 
chamber of peace ; when with Diana, the two knelt 
down in the temple of beauty. Once in a while, Lou- 
i-sy’s absoluteness of trust annoyed him; but how 
beautiful was her patience during these periods of 
irritation. She thought anger was the man’s preroga- 
tive; if she saw her noble Loughborough harried, 
there must be cause ; so she was never vexed with him, 
but with the cause. Loughborough’s anger, too, was 
of the restrained kind. A greater conciseness of words, 
a sharper flash in the eye, a whiter, not a redder, gleam 
on the rugged cheek, that was all she saw. At such 
times she would bring him all the balm she had of 
eye or touch or tread, refraining from speech the while, 
fearful lest she might not say the right thing, distrust- 
ful of herself when in his presence. That he should 
seek the companionship of others was not unpleasing 
to her. Was not his delight hers ? his success, her 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


237 


prayer? Jealousy had never thrown its violet, tempest 
shadows upon her fair countenance. She was the mis- 
tress of but few ideas, and she never jarred him with 
those. You may call this nullity ; but it was a sweet 
nullity, a tender renunciation of self which has never, 
since the world began, been wholly displeasing to man. 

Chaucer’s clerk of Oxenford, a learned gentleman, by 
all the gods and goddesses, makes of Griselda a mar- 
ried angel. Perhaps this ancient type, surviving in 
the Hessian Lou-i-sy, was more acceptable to the old- 
world man than to the new. In either case, however, 
its very submissiveness sometimes tempted rebellion 
against it. 

Loughborough’s train of thought threatened to last, 
so Diana moved from her cramped position with the 
words, — 

“ Aunt Mary is enjoying a good half-hour of quiet 
misery in the sitting-room ; let us go in and overwhelm 
her with a wood-fire and cheerfulness.” 

Grat’s reply was a grunt, the rude fellow. He hated 
the house where the women sat, where conventionality 
reigned, and generally kept himself to the porch with 
his dogs, or to the barn with his horses. In the vio- 
lence of his rebellion against custom, he forbade a 
butter-knife, also napkins, upon his table, declaring 
these appendages to be shilly-shally or genteel, and he 
pronounced genteel with a grimace, to bring odium 
upon the quality. Loughborough laughed gently at 
the thought of enjoying a half-hour of quiet misery. 
Unlike Grat, he was indulgent to the middle-aged, the 
feeble, and the commonplace. Grattan, on the other 
hand, could be downright chivalrous to octogenarian 


238 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


or brilliant adolescent, but was impatient of the period 
to be found halfway between. Extreme old age or 
youth gave him sensations of admiration or the sense 
of importance ; but the unpicturesque period of middle 
life seemed to him tedious, sterile, unprofitable, flat; 
his opinion, too, is that of the many. 

Loughborough murmured something about going 
home. Diana objected. 

“ Come,” she said, laying her hand insistently upon 
his shoulder, “come and see what a wood-fire I can 
make. You shall help, if you like. We will cheat 
Aunt Mary out of her misery, Uncle Grat out of his 
gruffness, you out of your unsociability ; come,” and 
of course he went. 

Aunt Mary was not to be so easily cheated, as Diana 
supposed. She vaguely felt that her niece brought 
the atmosphere of heathendom into the sitting-room, 
enlivened as it had been for a half-century with only 
such volumes as Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” and “Con- 
versations upon Chemistry.” Diana was familiar with 
the literature which needs quick wits, as well as with 
all the romances that are in touch with poetry and 
the sister arts. Miss Fontaine fetched a sigh as she 
watched this niece, kneeling down upon the rug in 
front of the hearth-place, laughing back to the brilliant 
flames which crackled up from the handfuls of chips she 
kept throwing from time to time upon the larger logs. 
Here was too audacious an abandonment to pleasure, 
warmth* laughter, companionship. A gulf divided these 
two ; aestheticism and asceticism face to face are Hebe 
and Hecate looking into each other’s eyes. Asceticism 
is a parasite. When it springs up in rich natures, it 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


239 


devours vitality, feeds upon the wholesome ripeness, 
turns everything morbid. It brings about the very 
evils it would avoid ; it is to unselfishness what prudery 
is to chastity ; to healthy self-restraint what bigotry is 
to religion. It stretches Health on its bed and turns 
Hope dizzy. To continue the personification, it sees 
itself in a magnifying-glass, and dresses to suit the 
monster face instead of the natural one. Miss Mary 
Jane’s asceticism was not of so strong a type ; but she 
had been brought up to deny herself foolishly ; to place 
a high valuation upon plainness, commonness, meagre- 
ness, mere utility ; to pinch her body and to starve her 
mind. Diana’s self-surrender to beauty and her hot 
vindication of the aesthetic looked to Miss Mary Jane 
like wantonness, inordinate worldliness ; and it may be 
that she had some right on her side. To hear a niece 
of hers describing the playing of Liszt and Rubinstein, 
or reciting poetry with a great deal of expression, 
appeared unmaidenly to her insular notions. 

“ I wish you had your flute, Dr. Loughborough,” 
said the young lady, petulantly ; but the flute was at 
the Fawnystawks. “ I should like to teach you that 
little song of Liszt’s I was describing to you the other 
day : it is a gem. If you could but hear him play. 
You forget the instrument. He simply tosses the 
melody up in the air and it comes down upon you 
from heaven.” 

Miss Mary Jane gave a deep crooning sigh from her 
rocker ; she thought that actresses must talk in this 
way, and she disapproved. Diana played upon an 
imaginary piano in the air, hummed a bar to illustrate 
her acceptance of something that Loughborough said, 


240 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


discovered that her uncle did not care for rhapsodizing 
about music, and proposed to recite some poetry ; for 
she was a young person in whom the flow of ideas 
and words pulse along in parallel streams. She had, 
too, a sense of her own importance, a quality which 
substituted, on occasions, that higher one, a sense of 
responsibility. Here, again, she and her aunt diverged, 
for Miss Mary Jane was first clipped as to her mind by 
unnecessary cares and duties ; also bound down by nar- 
rowing privations. 

Diana had the pleasure of seeing Grattan’s great 
throbbing eyes melt at Father Ryan’s war lyrics, 
learned in an idle hour ; for her horror was constraint 
to silence ; and she would rather be saying poetry aloud 
all day than nothing at all ; hence, the learning of 
poetry had become a solace to her in the long unsocial 
days she passed at the Valley Farm. Loughborough 
nodded approbation. He liked the poetry, but even 
more the zest which she showed in learning it. 

“ Learning by heart. I know no better way to keep 
a mind healthy. The activity refreshes the intellect, 
w r arms the heart, nerves the arm, even tugs at the foot, 
and moves you forward muscularly ; makes you more 
a man or a woman for having used it.” 

One of the physician’s efforts in the Pughtown 
neighborhood had been to overcome the senseless preju- 
dice existing there against books. How often had he 
said in such families as the Spanglers, “Books are a 
man’s best friends ; their advice is apt to be good, and 
they do not betray.” 

“ Grattan used to be that fond of his book as a little 
fellow,” threw in Miss Mary Jane, with a feeble at- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


241 


tempt to enter into the conversation, “ he’d have taken 
his speller and reader out to the barn and spent the day 
in and the day out, if mother had let him.” 

G rat’s reply to this was a grunt. He never took any 
other notice of his sister’s comments. As a youth, he 
had rather liked books, in spite of his calling them 
women’s weapons ; but he had always sneaked out of 
the house when wishing to indulge this taste; his 
preference having always been the literature of satire, 
rolled as a morsel under his tongue. 

As we have said before, Grat, the youngest-born 
of the house of Fontaine, had been a rebel from his 
cradle ; his first protest having been against his mother, 
whom he called “ the Pope the very wickedest word he 
could chance upon in the bosom of this highly Method- 
istical and Quakerish community. He remembered 
Veil that, after a protest from him one day, she had 
cried out, “ It’s a pity, Hen-e-ry Grattan, that those 
who taught you to talk did not also teach you to hold 
your tongue.” 

“ Father-land but mother-tongue,” had been the 
chap’s retort, with this addition, “ I don’t know who 
taught me how to talk, mother, if it wasn’t you ; and 
they all say I take after you mightily.” 

The last word was generally Grat’s, for after some 
such speech as this he was off to the barn or hay-loft, 
where he would spend whole days, in the rainy spring 
or in the sharp fall weather, in order to escape the hard, 
business-like activity of the women in the house. 

The conversation, being illy supported by either 
Grattan or his sister, was shared between Loughborough 
and Diana. She glided from poem to poem, strung 


242 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


upon her memory charmingly like pearls upon a silver 
wire. “ I call them prayers,” she said, “ and reciting 
them I call telling my rosary.” 

“ In imagination, you are a Catholic; in heart, a 
heathen,” said Loughborough. 

“ No ; I prefer to be a Catholic in both. Will you 
be my Father-confessor?” 

Loughborough was not ill-suited to such an office. 
He never sneered at deeds done or words said in sin- 
cerity. He did not preach to Diana, and yet he had 
power to make her feel the frivolity of her ideas, often, 
as compared with his. It was the contrast which her 
quick eyes saw that fixed the moral ; and true it is that 
we learn only from those we like. She liked Loughbor- 
ough very much, she w r ould have said, if asked. He 
shook his head at the word, Father-confessor. 

“ How should I be that ? I am in no way a Cath- 
olic. There would be dangers, too, in such a position. 
Do you know that you have a strange way, Miss Fon- 
taine, of working upon a man’s mind ?” He did not 
say “ my mind,” for he chose to be strictly impersonal. 
"Why can we not be friends, he said to himself. She 
needs a counsellor and a friend. She looked up 
quickly, even blushingly ; but Loughborough, sitting 
in the shadow of the hearth-place, added with the 
utmost tranquillity, — 

“ Yes ; some women are gifted in this way. What 
influence you could have with Grattan, if you would.” 

Diana was conscious of feeling disappointed, and she 
remained silent. They were now alone, for Miss Mary 
Jane was in the back kitchen seeing that the yeast w r as 
placed in the right temperature, and Grattan was on the 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


243 


porch. The silence was broken by a sharp bark from 
Spread Eagle, and the next moment a strange voice 
asking, outside, — 

“ Where is Dr. Loughborough ?” Immediately the 
door was thrown open and a village lad stepped in, 
saying rather excitedly, — 

“ Dr. Loughborough, you’re wanted right off, just as 
quick as ever you can come. Cap’n McElroy missed 
the ford at the creek, and the water was high and 
strong, and he was carried a good ways down the current. 
Willie Wilson fished him out. He’s there at his house, 
all but gone up the spout, I’m afeard, this time.” 

Loughborough was on his feet in an instant ; he 
touched his head interrogatively. 

The boy nodded, “Yes, sir, as full as a tick, I 
reckon. He’s that rackless when he’s sober, but when 
a man’s time has come, it’s come, drunk or sober ?” 

Loughborough went out during the moralizing. 
Diana heard him exchange a word with Grattan, who 
offered to accompany him, and then she heard the gate- 
latch click, and knew that they were gone. “Wretched, 
wretched man !” thought Diana, sitting alone in the 
hearth-corner, the cold night-air rushing in through 
the open door. “ How often he talked of his unlucky 
star. How often I have heard him say ‘ There is a tide 
in the affairs of men which, taken at its turn, leads on 
to fortune.’ His commentary always was, ‘ There’s an 

ebb in my affairs which leads to ’ He always left a 

blank. Is it to be filled up with that cold, vague, 
dreadful word, death ?” thought the girl, with a shud- 
der. “ Must so much that is gifted and beautiful come 
to such an end?” She thought of the sturdy, human- 


244 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


hearted physician striding along to the death-bed, per- 
haps thinking only of the other, not himself; of the 
help he might give, not of the gain he must receive : 
these thoughts acted like a tonic. “I will go find 
Aunt Mary and tell her ; perhaps we can do some- 
thing, too,” she said to herself, and she rose from her 
seat and went to the back-kitchen. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

The religion of a people is the best index to its 
character. Though the Valley was settled by a band 
of Scotch Presbyterians, certain of its counties were 
colonized very early in the century by numbers of 
Pennsylvania Dutch, who brought with them varieties 
of the Baptist denomination, such as Hard Shell, Iron- 
side, Dunkard, Campbellite, and New School. This 
last is the most progressive, while the Dunkard is, 
perhaps, the least so, according to our modern way of 
looking at things. These Dunkards — circumscribed, 
unlettered, frugal, matter-of-fact, unimaginative — 
clipped the wings of that faith inherited from their 
more reflective German forefathers, and reduced it to a 
barn-door fowl, — all for use and not for beauty. Can 
you conceive of a religion stripped bare of symbolism ? 
Such is the Dunkard’s. As the man so is his god, and 
so also his religion. Or to quote from Voltaire, “If 
God created man in his own image, man has been re- 
turning the compliment ever since.” 

Dunkard is derived from the word “ tunken,” to dip, 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


245 


because they baptize their members three separate times 
in the name of each person of the Trinity. Their 
creed is one of harsh restriction, for they refuse heaven 
to the unbaptized, and they will commune in no edifice 
but their own. They originated in Pennsylvania in the 
year 1724 ; but you will see their square, plain, barnlike 
meeting-houses scattered through some of the loveliest 
of the mountain vales that break into deeper curves the 
uplands of Virginia. As the Dunkard applies literally 
every Bible incident, his religion is the very consum- 
mation of literalism. He believes in the washing of 
feet, in the eating of the Paschal Lamb ; and he greets 
the brethren, whenever he chances to meet them, with 
a holy kiss. Diana had frequently seen these quaint- 
looking men, with their wide-brimmed hats, their 
sharp-pointed, dove-tailed coats, their pantaloons, 
home-made, home-dyed, wide at the hips and narrow 
along the lower limbs, meeting on the village street, 
facing erect and woodeny, as they imprinted a solemn 
kiss on each other’s lips ! At first, she had felt dis- 
posed to laugh. 

“ There is no occasion for you to laugh at them,” 
Grat said; " there are no cleverer people about here 
than the Dunkards. They mind thgir own business, 
and let everybody else’s alone.” 

“ Negative praise,” was Diana’s comment, one Sat- 
urday afternoon, as she stood by her uncle in the field. 
He was gloating in a survey of his stock. A lot of 
young sheep were rubbing each other in an ecstasy of 
woolly friction as they strove to get near him and the 
salt he was offering. Diana patted a gentle-looking 
ewe, and said, — 


21 * 


246 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ Clever? Do you mean kind or intelligent? I 
never know exactly what you mean by that word.” 

“ Do you know, Di, it strikes me that you fizzle out 
a heap on some mighty simple things, considering how 
smart everybody says you are,” was Gratis retort, 
punishing the stupidity of that mild-faced ewe, Diana 
had patted, by throwing the remainder of the salt over 
her head instead of into her mouth. “ There’s what 
you get for licking the salt from your lamb’s back 
instead of taking it intelligently out of my pan,” said 
Grat, with a malicious growl, adding, as he laughed 
at the beast’s discomfiture, “ Silliness is by no means 
confined to the sheep, eh ?” 

u Come, laugh at me over the sheep’s head as much 
as you like, Uncle Grattan. I shall not let you alone. 
I shall give you no peace until you take me to one of 
the Dnnkard meetings. To-morrow is Sunday ; take 
me to-morrow, won’t you ?” 

“ Yes, take you, and have you sitting in the Amen 
corner laughing at the older women with their babies ; 
the younger ones in their slat bonnets ; at Pappy 
Spitzer or Pappy Funkhauser with their truspasses for 
trespasses, or annahiliate for annihilate. No ; no. I 
cannot take you around with me. You’re one of the 
sort, Di, that has to be kept in a glass case for fear 
something might happen.” 

“ Laugh? What are you doing yourself, Uncle 
Grat ? Besides which, you can touch me if I should 
grow uproarious, as you seem to think I would.” 

“ Touch you ? Good Lord, what is the girl think- 
ing of? Why, do you suppose the men and the women 
sit anywhere near each other in a Dunkafd church? 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


247 


That’s the mischief, Di. I should have to sit on one 
side of the church and look at you on the other, the 
lines of your face breaking and quivering with laugh. 
Sometimes, I could swear that the devil’s wife, if he had 
one, looked out of your eyes. I don’t mind it some- 
times ; but then, again, I do. I’ve had many a favor 
from those people, and I’d take a licking before I’d be 
disgraced in a Dunkard church by one of my own kin.” 

Diana and her uncle walked slowly through the well- 
nibbled field ; they were on their way to look at some 
calves in the adjoining one. 

“ What an inconsistent creature you are, Uncle Grat, 
— sometimes independent, sometimes conventional. If 
you can’t trust to any better principles, why can’t you 
at least rely upon my good-breeding, if I should go to 
a Dunkard church?” 

“ Good-breeding !” Grat parodied the word with 
a demoniac grimace. He dropped it from his lips as 
a snarling cur might jerk from his teeth the bone he 
had tussled for. “ Good-breeding ! Butter on bread to 
hide sourness, eh ? It covers up the damnable hypocrisy 
of the stuck-up who think themselves better than other 
folks. I hate the word good-breeding. I despise the 
people who say it ; and I’ll be dog-on if you wouldn’t 
be a heap nicer girl, Di, if you could only forget it.” 

The words were ugly and the tone grating ; but the 
speaker was as superbly handsome a fellow as ever 
gave salt to sheep or trod the greensward. 

“Is it good-breeding that made you oust Vanessa 
Spangler out of her every-day wits and drive her into 
a kind of seventh-day rest up there somewhere in 
Shenandoah ?” 


248 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“Vanessa Spangler !” cried Diana, in sudden alarm ; 
“ is she worse ?” 

“ She was badly enough off last time I saw her,” 
answered Grat, in a provoking spirit of contrariety. 

“ Pray, don’t charge me with the shortcomings of 
Vanessa Spangler or your friend, Captain McElroy. 
Dr. Loughborough was generous enough to say that I 
was not to blame for the consequences of that man’s 
inconstancy, nor Vanessa Spangler’s folly.” Diana 
drew herself up with a good deal of dignity, and Grat 
added, — 

“ Every one knows that Vanessa is as foolish as the 
foolishest filly that ever licked a grass blade ; but I tell 
you seriously, Diana, you’ll get yourself into trouble 
if you don’t look out. You have a wonderful amount 
of audacity, and you call it courage.” 

Diana Fontaine, like many another, had mixed up 
her imaginary concepts of things with the things 
themselves. She adored courage and heroism ; so she 
thought that she already possessed these qualities. It 
is only after the first intoxication of youth has passed 
that one succeeds in dividing the ideal from the real. 

“ Who is it ?” she asked, with the utmost sauciness 
and a little ire, “ who is it that hates to be lectured, to 
be dogged, eh, Uncle Grattan*?” These words came 
home with sudden force, and they touched Grat Fon T 
taine’s sympathies. To be lectured, had been from 
babyhood his idea of torment. He softened down to 
Diana’s pat like a great surly bear. 

“ Have I really been lecturing you ?” he asked, re- 
lentingly. 

“ Yes,” with a pout. “ You are my poor grand- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


249 


mother over again. She, I’ve heard, was harsh, while 
my grandfather was handsome and genial. You lec- 
tured me on my manners, my morals ; and, now, I 
don’t know what in heaven’s name you are driving 
at.” 

Grattan stood aghast. He would rather, in his 
childhood, have been horsewhipped by his father than 
patted by his mother. She had roused only the surly 
nature in him ; and to be compared — vigorous, inde- 
pendent fellow that he was — to a complaining old lady 
who had nagged, nagged, nagged, from morning till 
night, was to him a kind of retribution. He felt in 
the mood to surrender, and Diana struck in with, — 

“ To-morrow will be a fine day, from this sunset. 
Take me to the Dunkard church, will you?” 

“ You won’t like it. You’ll get tired ; and we’ll 
have to take dinner at the Spitzers’, with sauer-kraut ; 
and you’ll get dyspepsia,” was Grattan’s reluctant 
assent. 

“ Dyspepsia ! I never had it in my life, and never 
mean to. You have it, you rapacious man, because 
you eat too fast ; and Dr. Loughborough says ” 

“ Dog-on Loughborough,” was Grattan’s interrup- 
tion, flung in as they reached the garden-gate, at which 
point they separated, — Grattan to go barnwards and 
give orders to Wesley, Diana to go up-stairs and re- 
arrange her pretty braided knot for tea. 

Loughborough had not thought she would laugh at 
the Dunkards. With that fine tact which he concealed 
under a rough exterior, he had said to her more than 
once, “The secret of breadth is to put yourself into 
other people, not them into you. Do not judge the 


250 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


world by yourself, but yourself and the world by a 
universal principle. You are too individual, Miss 
Fontaine. If you could once get wholly outside of 
yourself, I think you might give to the world some 
message which none but you could give, quite as you 
would give it.” And Loughborough’s belief in her 
had added to her mental stature. Her Uncle Grattan 
was quite mistaken ; she did not wish to regard the 
Dunkards as a comedy, but as a serious reality, from 
which she, or any one, might learn a lesson. 

Diana, it may be seen, was striving to throw off some 
of those outer layers of belief which were the result 
of circumstances. Nor was this struggle to do so un- 
becoming to her. It had deepened what before was too 
light ; it softened what before was too hard. She had 
worshipped wit and brilliancy, and she was beginning 
to discover the superiority of wisdom and truth. It 
was only a beginning, however ; for the virtues exist 
in human nature very spasmodically. It is only will- 
ing discipline that makes them constant and gives them 
rounded being. 

Miss Mary Jane objected to Diana’s long ride of a 
Sabbath morning to the Dunkards’ church. Her ob- 
jections roused Grat’s resistance ; and this, added to 
the young lady’s determination, brought their plan to 
the climax of success. “ It is a beautiful, unforgetable 
ride,” she said, when they had crossed the loops of 
Sandy Creek for the seventh and last time on Sunday 
morning, and caught sight of the unpainted, wooden 
meeting-house, which could not even gain beauty from 
the lovely hills at its back, on fire, now, with October 
maples. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


251 


At the door, Grat dismounted, and, after helping the 
girl to spring from her saddle, he led the horses to their 
long, low shed to be hitched. On entering the church, 
Diana’s eye was caught by a double row of slat-bon- 
neted women on one side and a double row of heavily- 
bearded men or smooth baby-faced lads on the other. 
Four elderly men occupied the platform dignified by 
a pulpit, — these were Pappy Spitzer, Pappy Stover, 
Pappy Funkhauser, Pappy Eichelberger, and these 
four pappies, as the preachers are called in Dunkard 
neighborhoods, were already sitting in a state of ex- 
pectancy, ready to bless the ears of the congregation 
with four separate sermons. Diana took her place in 
a middle pew, and looked around. There were a third 
more babies than women on the female side, and a great 
deal of nursing, hushing, soothing, blended with wail- 
ing, whining, and downright crying was going forward. 
The younger men were not without their occupation ; 
there was on their side a good deal of running out to 
see how the horses were coming on, and a good deal of 
peering into the slat bonnets which happened to frame 
the rosiest cheeks and the bluest eyes. A singular 
effect is produced when the men and women of a con- 
gregation wear clothes dyed in the same color; all 
the coats and gowns here being either dull brown from 
the juice of boiled walnut hulls, or dingy blue from 
the tinge bestowed by indigo. It was a coincidence 
that Diana’s dress was also brown and blue ; but the 
brown, how different ; the blue, how opposite. The 
brim of her brown straw hat was just broad enough 
to hold the breast of a beautiful bird. The clouded 
blue of her cloth riding-habit showed a rim of blue 


252 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


and brown feathers fastened together shell-wise around 
throat and wrist. She still held her riding-whip be- 
tween gauntleted hands, forgetting that it was an un- 
churchly weapon. She caught many pairs of eyes 
fixed upon her with the blank, wondering, or the 
bovine, pondering gaze of the unintelligent, and re- 
turned it with a keen, questioning, direct one of her 
own. How simple-minded must the men and women 
be who, on Good Thursday, can, in the open congrega- 
tion, bare one foot of shoe and stocking in order to have 
it washed, after the fashion of the disciples at the Last 
Supper. Yet here in this church, once a year, was this 
sacrament performed, — the elder brethren washing the 
men’s feet ; the elder sisters, the women’s. Down the 
two aisles were carried the wooden pails of mountain- 
water, and each foot in turn solemnly washed, wiped, 
and restored, a hallowed member, to its owner. 

How comfortable must they be who believe that the 
church-communicant has reached the state of absolute 
holiness; even though the non-communicant is sup- 
posed still to riot in sin ; from this last no religious 
duty is expected, not even the saying of prayers. 
Such doctrines as these are set forth at every meeting 
by the pappies. The eyes of baptized and unbaptized 
ones, Diana’s among them, were fixed upon Pappy 
Funkhauser, when, in the midst of much coughing on 
the part of the congregation, he stood up with open 
lips, not to be closed for an hour. In rustic congrega- 
tions, coughing seems to act as a spiritual vent. It 
lets the soul out, which roams about at large. This 
good man entered into a minute description of God’s 
plan ; he told how the Lord saved some people and 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


253 


punished others in order to show his own glory and 
power ; his God was of a nature congenial with his own, 
and on intimate terms with him. After his exposition, 
in which the same idea was repeated many times, he 
sat down, interclasped his hands over his well-rounded 
paunch and begin to twirl his thumbs. There was not 
a furrow on his round, plump face ; no mark of care, 
no expression save one of pleased self-complacency; 
his head was as bald as a baby’s, and was not unlike a 
baby’s, with its blinking eyes, if we except the long, 
full grayish beard. Diana’s eyelids fluttered beseech- 
ingly in the direction of her Uncle Grattan ; but he 
took no notice ; his arms were folded over his chest, 
his eyes fixed upon Pappy Stover, who next rose to 
speak ; not a muscle gave evidence of Grat’s train of 
thought. Pappy Stover’s sermon was upon temper- 
ance, his text being, “ The man carrying a pitcher of 
water.” That this man was an adequate illustration 
of temperance was logically proved ; for, “ if not, why 
should the man have carried a pitcher of water ? It 
was not furrin’ wine, nor hum-made wine, nor cider, 
nor (here was the piZce de resistance ) whuskey, like 
folkses get from yon still-house nigh unto Pughtown. 
It was water, water, water,” the last water being shouted 
loud enough to rouse from the dead all men who have 
ever perished by drowning. The children who had 
dozed during Pappy Funkhauser’s milder oratory now 
woke up and sung out, thinking, no doubt, that the 
proper time was arrived for the potation they preferred. 
A train of mothers was, in consequence, started towards 
the room adjoining the church, where buckets of spring- 
water, a cradle or two, and some half-dozen chairs were 


254 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


conveniences to be found. Pappy Eichelberger’s turn 
c&me next. He directed bis remarks against the young 
folks and their wickednesses. He found much to say ; 
and Diana, sitting before him in her natty riding-habit, 
felt that she was the guilty one, and not those round- 
faced, innocent-looking girls, her neighbors. 

Pappy Spitzer was not less spicy than his prede- 
cessor; but his philippic was against the devil. He 
railed at human nature as a whole, and abused the con- 
gregation as a part of the nations of the world. Meek, 
gosling faces were lifted to his with faint awakening 
interest. He was making them feel, and they were 
enjoying the excitement of sensation. Spitzer was a 
blacksmith on week-days, an ecclesiastic on Sabbaths, 
and his gestures gave evidence that he had acquired by 
this occupation more brawn than brain. He slapped 
the Bible, butted the pulpit-cushions, and rang out, 
with a jeering grin, “ Ye-es, you love your chillen. 
You’d love old Nick if you thought he was kin to 
you ; and the shame is, he is kin to you. Throw him 
off ; his arms is about your necks ; fling him down ; 
he’s a-holdin’ on to your coat-tails ; beat him away.” 
Spitzer thrashed the book of Holy Writ once more. 
“ I tell you, he’s a-rocking the very babies in their 
cradles;” the mothers present hugged their infants 
closer at these words ; the fathers, sitting in solemn 
wedge on their side of the meeting-house, looked gently 
interested, as if they were listening to the exploits of 
some possum or red fox described by the huntsman 
himself. 

“ How they do worship the devil,” whispered Diana 
to her uncle, when they were out of church. “Do you ?” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 255 

“ A convenient scapegoat, Di ; a man must have a 
vent.” 

Before Diana could reply to the accusation that she 
had been sitting in a rogue’s paradise all the morning, 
and that she had looked proportionately naughty, she 
felt her hands seized, and, looking up, beheld Miss 
Sarah Jane Jackson in front of her. 

“ Well, honey, if here ain’t a sight good for sore 
eyes. Dianny, as peart and sassy as a little F. F. V. 
But let me say ‘ howdy’ to the leftenant. What brung 
you all this way, Leftenant Fontaine? I never met 
up with you at a Dunkard meeting-house before.” 

The sole answer being a shrug, the nervous creature 
chattered on to hide an embarrassment which brought 
the purple of a frost-bitten rose into the sallow skin of 
her high cheek-bones. 

“ Be you going to Funkhauser’s to-dinner ? Yes? 
I be, too. You’ll get good eating there (in a loud 

whisper), unless, perhaps, the sauer-kraut Did you 

ever taste sauer-kraut, Dianny ?” then, with a flighty 
change of theme, she added, “ Don’t you love to hear 
Pappy Spitzer talk ? He has tongue enough.” 

“ Cheek ! Don’t you think so ?” threw in Grat, 
turning, for the first time, towards the lady walking 
along beside them. Miss Sarah Jane applauded his 
wit with a boisterous laugh, and thanked him, for 
notice, with her eyes. The Funkhauser homestead 
was close to the church ; a few yards of road brought 
them to its whitewashed gate, which clicked under 
Grat’s hand. They walked up a little path bordered 
by a row of sycamore trees, whitewashed to the trunk, 
a match for the whitewashed palings. In the garden, 


256 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


flowers were out of bloom/ saving a few sturdy chrys- 
anthemums that showed their yellow, aromatic buttons 
in the midst of parterres edged around with whitewashed 
stones ; the two largest beds in this prim enclosure were 
ornamented by a cluster of excessively large shells. 
The farther inland you go, the more do you find the 
country-people prizing these curiosities brought from 
the coast. The shell delivers to them a message from 
that great, wild, wide ocean of which they have heard, 
but which, perhaps, they have never seen. On the porch 
stood Mrs. F unkhauser, her daughter Barbara, Mr. and 
Mrs. Spangler. Mrs. Spangler was Mrs. Funkhauser’s 
sister, and she was talking energetically as the visitors 
approached. She appeared to be taking up Pappy 
Spitzer’s philippic where he had left it, her speech, 
just now, being directed against the members of her 
family. It was well known that she was a woman with 
powder and shot in her disposition, and after working 
off the explosives she usually sat down relieved. 

Conjugal discourse presented few surprises to this 
worthy couple. Her husband was wont to say, “ I can 
set on the front po’ch and talk with my old ooman, and 
she happen to be fifty mile up the Valley ; or in the 
back kitchen, or up to the meetin’-house, just as it may 
chance.” Abuse being a luxury, Loughborough had 
once said, slyly, when called in to prescribe for her 
neuralgia, “Well, madam, who’s to blame this time? 
The more the merrier, you know. Fire away. I like 
to give my patients that which relieves them quickest.” 

“ All the preachers get outen me, they kin put in 
they eye,” proclaimed this lady’s husband ; for though 
most people boast of liberality, some do of niggardli- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 257 

ness, and Spangler was one of these. His lady’s cue 
was dissent, of course. 

“ He’s that close-fisted,” she threw in with superb 
scorn, pointing a long bony finger at her liege lord, 
“ he’s that close-fisted, Sister Spitzer, so as I have to 
pay towards the meetin’-house fund down to Pughtown 
outen my butter-money and hen-money. I pay ev’ry 
dog-on rade cent, eat me ef I do’ent.” 

Mrs. Spangler being a woman of spirit, and having, 
moreover, the woman’s faculty for nagging, now undid 
her solferino bonnet-strings and gazed her husband into 
his habitual attitude of hopeless stolidity. Into this 
conversation the three newcomers broke with a soften- 
ing influence. 

Greetings were exchanged. Diana’s feather-trimmed 
riding-habit was surveyed by the ladies with interest. 
She was a bird-of-paradise suddenly walking in upon 
a flock of barn-door fowls. What immeasurable dis- 
tances can the dressmaker create between creatures of 
the same species. The woman with clumsy darts gazes 
upon the woman with daintily curved and taper ones 
as upon a visitor from another sphere. Meanwhile, 
Miss Sarah Jane besieged Grat, and talked herself out 
of breath, in the belief that she was beginning at last 
to make an impression upon him. He sank down upon 
one of the green-painted porch benches, hoping that 
something might happen which would give him the 
chance of escape. With all her good humor, Miss 
Sarah Jane’s lack of insight was pathetic ; a sad thing 
it is for a human being to have bubbling within him 
the enthusiasm which, instead of kindling, kills the 
ardor of others. 


22 * 


258 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


“ The capting will be as pleased as pie to see you, 
Miss Diany,” said Mrs. Funkhauser, who never in her 
life detected the possibility of a blunder until after she 
had made it. She regretted this speech immediately, 
for she was snapped up by her sister, who said, pet- 
tishly,— 

“ ’Pears to me like you’re the queerest ’ooman, Mary 
Love, to be a aunt I ever did see. I shouldn’t a’ 
thought Miss Dianny would be so keen to set eyes on 
Capting McElroy after what has took place.” 

“ Captain McElroy ! Is he here ? Why, I thought 
him ill at your house, Mrs. Spangler,” answered Diana, 
surprised. 

“ Do you mean to say, in real earnest, that the 
capting’s movements are unbeknown to you, Miss 
Dianny ?” 

Mrs. Spangler was capable of satire, and as she had 
now the appearance of being ready to say more, the 
two ladies included in her disdain took flight into the 
house in order to avoid hearing it. 

Barbara followed, and began to dismember Diana 
of hat, gloves, and riding-whip, while the mistress of the 
house opened a back door and vanished in the midst 
of a strong smell of sauer-kraut. 

“ No, thanks ; I will not go up-stairs, now,” was 
Diana’s answer to Miss Barbara’s invitation that they 
should go to the best bedroom ; so Miss Funkhauser 
went off alone, smoothing with her hand the bird- 
breast on Diana’s hat ; and the latter turned towards 
the parlor, hoping to find therein a refuge from Mrs. 
Spangler’s stormy tongue. This room was enveloped 
in a jail-like obscurity, so that at first she perceived 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


259 


nothing but the pieces of furniture, which seemed only 
to be darker spots on a dark space. She soon dis- 
cerned, however, a figure stretched at full length on a 
black horse-hair sofa between the two windows. The 
eye, quickly adjusting itself to the shadowed room, 
told her, the next instant, that this was the figure of 
McElroy. Hog Creek, it has been already seen, had 
not bestowed death upon him ; for, by a strange con- 
trariety of nature, men like McElroy do not die early ; 
they drag along throughout an entire lifetime, — a living 
body, a dying mind, a dead will. Diana stood still. 
McElroy roused slightly, leaned his elbow upon the 
sofa-cushions, supported his head upon his hands, 
looked at her and smiled. The apathy forsook his 
countenance ; something of his old dreamy self flickered 
under his heavy lids. Alas ! this smile was more 
pitiable than the apathy had been. It brought no re- 
sponse to Diana’s lip. It was the struggle betwixt 
mind and bqdy; the mind was beginning slowly to 
assert itself and perceive its own shame. It was the 
weirdest, wannest, saddest smile that can visit the 
human face. It was hopelessness punished by the 
memory of brighter and happier times. Diana was 
touched by it to nothing warmer than pity. She 
realized, now, that spurs, sash, and cavalry-boots do 
not make the man. Yet, what does ? Then the figure 
of Loughborough presented itself to her imagination, 
making dreaminess and grace appear abject and mean 
beside his uncouth, perhaps, yet unyielding mascu- 
linity. 

The thought of Loughborough flooded her with a 
kind of hopeful energy. She felt the desire which 


260 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


womanly women have, that of cherishing something 
weaker than themselves. The impulse came upon her 
to lay her hand upon the head of the shipwrecked man, 
and say, “ Strive,” or to touch his limp fingers and 
whisper, “ Struggle against your demon ; and, in strug- 
gling, be of good cheer ; salvation is for him who 
struggles ;” but she restrained herself, pitying, in 
silence, the ragged hat, the uniform frayed at the 
seams, framing so much recklessness. 

“ I am glad to see you better,” she said at last, just 
the least bit embarrassed. 

“ Better ! Do you call this better ?” was McElroy’s 
answer, as, still smiling that weird smile, he spread his 
hand before her, that her eyes might dwell upon its 
sickly transparency. Diana murmured something about 
first steps in convalescence. 

“ Loughborough would have me come. Chalybeate 
and sulphur springs here, you know, out in the grove. 
Did they point them out as you rode up He made 
a gesture, half weariness, half interest, for McElroy 
could be polite even when half gone in an opium 
dream. “So the Funkhausers brought me bodily, 
w’hether I would or not, in the spring-wagon.” Then, 
with a sudden compulsion, he interrupted his rambling 
speech to say, “ But I forget, Miss Diana ; you are 
standing. Do sit down. Yes, that arm-chair is a 
comfortable one. I often sit in it ; they spoil me here 
terribly, Barbara and all.” 

The speaker smiled again his languid, cheerless 
smile ; but it died away, this time, almost instantane- 
ously. Diana sat down as requested. She forgot that 
she had been tired a few minutes ago. Her face and 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


261 


form were so full of energy, a quality which McElroy 
lacked, that he seemed to derive a ghastly kind of 
pleasure in surveying her. 

“ You will excuse me for not getting up from this 
abominably uncomfortable sofa ; but, you see, I’m such 
an invalid. Everybody excuses me, Miss Diana ; you 
must, too.” 

She leaned forward, as she answered in her chal- 
lenging way, “ But if I do not excuse you, to excuse is 
to accuse. Do you remember the proverb ?” 

McElroy shook his head. A woman’s service was 
still sweet, but her challenge no more to him than an 
antiquated weapon to a modern field-officer. 

“ Everybody will have to excuse me from this time 
on forever.” 

“ You are not going to make yourself a walking 
apology forever, Captain McElroy ? You have been 
an enemy to yourself ; you have suffered on account 
of it. You have been ill ; you will get well, and be 
happy again.” 

“ Happy !” ejaculated McElroy, with more anima- 
tion than he had yet shown. “ I have never been so 
happy in my life as I am now.” 

“Do you call playing with your conscience and 
singing it to sleep, happy ?” Diana’s pity changed to a 
scorn that lifted every feature of her face, and her 
figure, too, into noble surprise. McElroy stayed quiet 
for a while, neither her words nor her look taking effect 
at once. He was growing obtuse, so the sting was 
gradual. As soon as he realized the full import of 
what she had said, he felt a tremor go through him. 
He stirred from his pillows, half rose, rose wholly, 


262 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


then sat down again on the sofa, but in an upright 
position. 

“ I believe,” he said, in a shaking voice, “ I believe, 
Diana Fontaine, that you almost have the power to 
make me miserable again.” 

What a terrible expression is that which shows 
apathy and energy struggling in the same bosom, with 
the odds in favor of apathy. Diana sprang up from 
her chair with the words, “ W ould to heaven that I 
had the power to make you wholly miserable. In 
that misery lies your safety. Oh, Captain McElroy, 
throw away from you the wretched happiness which 
cheats you with a name, but is not happiness ; it is the 
real misery.” 

Diana plead ; she was lovely in her pleading, and 
her eyes were full of tears. A long, deep, struggling 
sigh went through McElroy’s enfeebled frame ; it was 
one of the throes of his moral and physical nature. 
Sitting upright, his ghastliness appalled. What that 
sigh preluded Diana never knew ; for Barbara Funk- 
hauser walked in the parlor, now, with heavy tread 
and wondering eyes. 

“ Well, I think in my heart ! ef you ain’t setting up, 
capting. Dear heart, but you hadn’t ought to be, ’deed 
you hadn’t. You look all turned round, and you 
saying you was so happy all the morning. Lie down, 
capting, lie down, do.” This was a long speech for 
Barbara Funkhauser. Diana felt that her hands and 
tongue were now tied. She moved to the window and 
peered through the half-closed shutters at the scrubby 
chrysanthemum bushes in the garden, at the group of 
people enjoying the mid-day sunlight pleasantly upon 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


263 


the porch. Her sensitive nostrils took in the all-per- 
vading odor of sauer-kraut ; it mingled with her 
discouragement and sickened body as well as mind. 
She felt a loathing for food, a shrinking from social 
chatter, a longing to be far away from the human and 
his horrors, away in the depths of some wholesome 
solitude, where the pine flings its pure scent upon the 
air, and where the elements of Nature forever struggle 
and forever conquer. 

When she turned to see what McElroy was doing, 
she perceived that already he had succumbed to Bar- 
bara Funkhauser’s eloquent attentions. He had fallen 
back among his cushions, and was gazing, half-troubled, 
half-comforted, upon the Hessian girl who knelt at his 
side measuring in a spoon drops from a bottle. Yes, 
it is plain, she thought. Loughborough was right. 
This man will go on to the end a craven, afraid to 
meet life, eating his opium, enslaving his woman min- 
ions, and with this thought she glided unobserved from 
the room. 


CHAPTER XY. 

Winter in the country is but a poor time for visit- 
ing, as knitting, darning, patching, with a thousand 
lesser duties, eat up the short day. The housewives in 
Pughtown and its neighborhood, huddled in worsted 
shoulder-capes, kept their chapped hands busy with 
such work as this, or with thawing the milk in the cold 
mornings, and in covering with newspapers their potted 


264 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


geraniums, in the sharp evenings, to protect their dar- 
lings from the frost that came like a thief in the night. 
They were glad to hug their firesides, not venturing 
out, except once in a great while to church. At the 
break of spring Loughborough and Lou-i-sy were to 
be married, so the latter, of course, was now absorbed 
in quiet but happy preparation. 

Married ! This word led Diana to the brink of a 
precipice over which she looked into a kind of terrify- 
ing darkness. Even Grattan was away ; so the sus- 
pension of those little contentions and reconciliations 
which enlivened the friendship of uncle and niece made 
the monotony of her winter at the Valley Farm seem 
yet drearier. She would have been thankful for a 
glimpse of Algy Schwartz* bluntly honest features ; but 
he, happy fellow, was in Texas, hundreds of miles 
away from miserable Pughtown. Even McElroy, so 
low in spirits had Diana come, that she would have 
been willing to warm her dreary winter-day in the 
light of his splendid smile; but he was occupying 
another school-house in a neighboring county, alter- 
nating the serene negation of an opium dream with 
the exhilaration produced by home-made apple-brandy. 

Diana consequently was left to the depressing com- 
panionship of her aunt. At first she bore the circum- 
scribed life bravely, but after a while she began to 
droop. She could not hinder her thoughts from flying 
to Loughborough. She read every number of the 
Godey’s “Lady’s Book” stacked up in the parlor; 
plunged into Fox’s “ Book of Martyrs ;” even read 
Mrs. Edwards’ “Conversations on Chemistry,” and 
Jay’s “ Sermons,” but all this merely constituted grada- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


265 


tions of dreariness. She went to bed with the name 
of Loughborough half-breathed upon her lips; she 
awoke with the image of him — stalwart, serious, yet 
kind — in her vision. “ It is natural,” she explained 
to herself, with that subtle fallaciousness for which 
Loughborough himself had often laughed at her, — “ it 
is natural that I should think of him. He is the only 
real friend I have here ; the others are shadows, — my 
aunt a ghost that forebodes, usually, evil ; McElroy, 
an illusion that mocks ; Loughborough is a reality, — a 
man. Why does he not drop in of an evening, as he 
used to do ? Is he always, all the time, at the Fawny- 
stawks?” His absence vexed her; though, had she 
reflected, she would have realized that it implied more 
real interest than even his presence could have done ; 
surely, it meant something, — what ? “ I wish that I 

could fall ill, then he would have to come profession- 
ally,” but she did not fall ill ; monotony did not dis- 
agree with her body ; and the long tramps she took 
through snow and slush braced her strong young frame. 
These tramps, however, met with resistance from Miss 
Mary Jane, who said one snowy day, as the two sat by 
the fire, — 

“ I would not go about so much by myself, if I was 
you, honey ; the folks talk down at Pugh town.” 

“Talk? let them,” was Diana’s reply; “besides 
which, Aunt Mary, I get so tired of sitting. You 
know I have been accustomed all my life to walking or 
dancing or skating, to violent exercise. Did you stay 
quietly all the time in this little sitting-room when you 
were my age ?” 

Aunt and niece glanced at each other, Diana wonder- 
m 23 


266 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


ing whether her life would ever be painted in dull, gray 
monochrome like Miss Mary Jane’s ; and she began to 
fear it would. 

“ We never went about in my day, honey, unless we 
had something very particular to go for.” 

Miss Fontaine the elder, the presiding spirit of stag- 
nation, sank her gaze into the sock she was knitting for 
rough, rebellious Grat; Miss Fontaine the younger 
sank hers into the dull red embers in the hearth-place. 
There was but little cheer in the picture thus presented ; 
the brick-work was cracked and blackened by accu- 
mulations of soot ; the charred logs, lying criss-cross 
upon the andirons, gave a sullenly-red glower. The 
two ladies sighed, — one with a wailing cadence, from 
years of continuous discouragement ; the other, with an 
impatient restlessness that rebelled against discourage- 
ment. 

Diana hardly realized that her aunt’s youth had been 
spent in a jail where one will alone reigned supreme, 
that one her grandmother’s. Old Mrs. Fontaine had 
been a fast worker and a fast talker in her day. She 
could scold her children, reprove her servants, as well 
as keep herself and all of them busy, at the same time. 
Labors at the Valley Farm were co-operative in Miss 
Mary Jane’s youth ; and Mrs. Fontaine, sitting in the 
lee of the sideboard, knitted and gave orders. Her 
daughters, ranged around her, allowed their minds to 
wander, under the restless zeal of the maternal tongue, 
while their hands pieced together strips for a rag- 
carpet ; the younger children being set to rubbing the 
brass knobs of the sideboard, and the little darkies to 
winding yarn. Every few minutes a colored woman 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


267 


would step in from the quilting-room to get an order, 
or from the kitchen with a sample of mince-meat or 
other mess, which last was tested with minute care, 
passed around the circle, and appraised. When Mrs. 
Fontaine found no opportunity for scolding, her wisdom 
overflowed in saws ; in this way animadverting upon 
the discontent visible on her daughters’ faces. Grat 
and his brothers found in the hayloft their vent ; but 
the girls had none, and there was a burning of the 
inward fires, until finally their light went out and dis- 
content was replaced by a dull resignation. 

“ So you’re keen to get away from home, are you, 
Mary Jane ?” Mrs. Fontaine would say. “ Why, I 
don’t know, they say, who know, that if an ass goes a 
travelling, he’ll never come back a horse or to the 
prettiest of her girls, Martha Alice, “ I counsel you not 
to be too dainty, Marthy Alice. Silks and satins put 
out the kitchen fire, and a woman that loves to be at the 
window is like a bunch of grapes on the highway or to 
one of the elder sons, “ Have a care, William Henery, 
how you mix yourself up with that young man at the 
still-house ; if you play with a fool at home, he’ll play 
with you abroad. You say he’s clever? My father 
used to tell how every ass thinks himself worthy to 
stand with the king’s horses.” Of her husband, a 
hot-headed, generous-handed old Democrat, this hard- 
fisted, sententious dame would say, by way of rebuking 
the sudden outburst of liberality, “ the head gray, and 
no brains yet, eh?” 

None of these, not even Billy, answered the lady 
back. Mistress she was, and the last word she would 
have ; she believed in a maxim as in a Bible verse. 


268 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


To her, God was a provider ; the angels, house-holders ; 
and man the outcome of a rampant utilitarianism. The 
good lady was now dust, but her spirit had left its 
impress. 

Miss Mary Jane’s soul was too far gone in sleep to 
be roused ; her niece, however, lashed herself with 
strong sensations and beat her wings against the bars 
of the cage. After a slice of dried-apple pie eaten for 
dinner, she mounted to the attic, and there sat down 
between two heaps of walnuts. She must have an 
outlet of some kind, and she found it in a sonnet 
addressed to Lou-i-sy. It was full of some pleasing 
compound words, such as vestal-whiteness, dove-soft- 
ness, and Diana pronounced it choice. After reading 
the sonnet, she resharpened her pencil, and tried some- 
thing in the ballad style, which she called, u Recollec- 
tions,” and which she intended to be pathetic : 

Dear, my friend, do you remember 

Those beechen woods we sauntered through, 

Yellowed by a sad September, 

’Neath Virginia’s Ridge of Blue? 

And do you mind my girlish prattle, 

Like the chatt’ring run, you said, 

Winding round its meadowed cattle, 

Chafing ’gainst its rocky bed ? 

The years have slain that sportive maiden, 

Yet her spirit walks earth’s shores, — 

A spirit galled and sorrow-laden 
Haunts the homestead’s steps and doors. 

Asks what the years have ta’en from thee ? 

Oh, friend, these years, these cruel years; 

They slew our love I they made joy flee ; 

They took the smiles ; they left the tears. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


269 


Diana received some pleasure from swimming 
through the waves of poetry, though she had some 
trouble with her rhymes and a good deal with her feet ; 
but in the glow produced by composition, critic, of 
course, melted into rhapsodist. 

“ What miserable machinery is necessary for repre- 
senting these pictures made within the mind,” she said 
to herself, turning over numerous little bits of paper, 
consecrated, this one to an “ Ode on Friendship,” in 
which Sir Launce played the rdle of ideal friend ; that 
one to “ The Rhyme of Reason,” in which love was 
represented as a selfish end in life, and reason the ulti- 
mate aim of existence ; so on, ad libitum. Yes, what 
an infinite amount of drudgery is needed to touch the 
springs of thought, — ink, pen ; she touched hers 
wearily ; two hours of work, such as it was, produced 
reaction. 

The hand requires days for what the mind can do 
in an instant. Between the author’s concept of his 
idea and the reader’s conception of that concept stands 
a dark line uniting two luminous points. “ Ah ! how 
delightful,” she thought, “ that through little dark 
symbols spirit may live in the world even when body 
is dust. You little black imps” (apostrophizing her 
work), “ an angel hovers over each one of you.” 

Diana, as has been said before, had a lively imagina- 
tion, for which she had been much laughed at by her 
Pughtown relatives. But Loughborough had said to 
her more than once, “ Do not be ashamed of it, Miss 
Diana ; it is a mark of especial favor set upon you by 
the gods.” Loughborough was so generous ; no, not 
generous, but just. Justice is, after all, a very fine 
23 * 


270 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


generosity; and justice, generosity, mercy, are only 
different words for Truth. 

Twilight comes before its time in low-raftered attics ; 
it soon grew dismally cold, and Diana’s fingers were 
cramped. She ran down the blue-painted steps to her 
aunt’s bedroom, down the next flight, then stopped, with 
her hand on the latch, surprised by voices. It was not 
Wesley’s voice. She opened the door, tremblingly, and 
her gaze fell upon Loughborough, seated in one of the 
deal-chairs, talking with her aunt. He had heard the 
coming step, so he rose immediately, advanced, held 
out his hand, and their eyes met. 

Again and again, in the past two months, Diana had 
consecrated herself to friendship ; but she had mistaken 
her own heart ; and, when surprised, women’s emotions 
overflow more readily than men’s. In that one glance 
exchanged between the two, as they stood close to each 
other in the dingy sitting-room, Loughborough saw 
that the fires upon her inward altar were lit, and, 
alas ! for him. It was only a glance betwixt double 
fringes, but it was a bid to him to come and be her 
heart’s guest. Oh, tell-tale eyes ! The lips may keep 
the firm line given by self-control, but the soul will 
not be caught in bonds. It struggles, it pants for free- 
dom ; and what is its freedom ? — to merge in the life of 
another ? 

The sudden realization of his suspicions troubled 
Loughborough. He had kept away from the Valley 
Farm just because he knew that he could not go there 
without being drawn into a deeper and more delicious 
life than ever Lou-i-sy had kindled within him. To 
break the spell, he kept away. But now here was 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


271 


another beside himself concerned. What was his duty ? 
His duty, ordinarily, was to heal. He could heal now ; 
and yet he must refrain ? The problem filled his coun- 
tenance with gloom ; made his hand fall away heavily 
from Diana’s, and made him sit down again in the deal- 
chair, oppressed with thoughtfulness and silence. Diana, 
not knowing what message had flown forth from her, sat 
down also, constrained, and yet conscious of a trans- 
formation in everything around her. Aunt Mary 
looked no longer dejected, but pleasantly subdued ; the 
fire was no longer a half-extinguished flame, but a con- 
stellation of warmth and brilliancy. The sitting-room 
was no longer dingy, but steeped in a kind of soft 
sobriety ; all this being the framework for a feeling of 
ecstasy which sprang up within her, which flew from 
her, lit upon each object like a glorious cherub of im- 
mortal freshness. 

“ Why have you been so long coming ? Aunt Mary 
and I thought you were never coming to see us again. 
We thought we must have offended you.” 

Diana tried not to seem too much pleased with her 
visitor, so she said “we,” though Aunt Mary was a 
passive party to that “we.” But Diana, it must be 
remembered, was a generous person with her feelings. 

“ Offended ? I do not get offended easily, Miss Fon- 
taine. I take it that the fellow who is always getting 
offended is, in himself, a very offensive personage.” 

How delightfully like Loughborough this speech 
sounded. It seemed like another arrival of his spirit, 
and Diana greeted it with a smile. Truly, there was a 
fascination in her proximity. Loughborough wondered 
whether it was his duty to surrender himself to it or 


272 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


not. Of what use wondering; of what use duty; 
there is something higher than duty. A sweet and 
subtle intimacy bound the two with invisible threads. 

“ How have you been getting along, lately ?” asked 
Loughborough, rather tritely, but thinking, in his 
kindly altruism, much more of his companion than of 
himself. 

“ I have been all but dead, — now alive.” She spoke 
in a low voice, and Loughborough, in a half-whisper 
added, “ Poor child, I knew you must be lonely, but 
how could it be helped ?” Then aloud, “ Come for a 
sleigh-ride with me, will you ? It is not too cold. Ho 
you think so, Miss Mary Jane?” Loughborough 
turned towards the elder lady, then to Diana with the 
repeated “ Will you ?” 

Her answer was a motion as quick as the deer’s 
towards the staircase. She was greedy of every moment 
lost. The eagerness of young creatures longing for 
life’s fullness is pathetic. Had any one told Lough- 
borough that, on his trumping up an excuse to go to 
the Valley Farm that afternoon, he should also ask 
Diana Fontaine to ride with him, he would have flouted 
the assertion. 

Yet here he was stepping into his sleigh after Diana, 
shaking the reins, and feeling his horse first quiver into 
motion, then trip swiftly along over the packed snow 
of the lane as airily as a girl. In the opalescent sheen 
of the snow-covered high-road that swept before them, 
straight and white, he had eyes for his companion. 
Joy’s rose-hued banner waved across her cheek and 
turned its usual dark, though healthful, paleness into a 
vivid glow. The little white scar under her lip, a 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


273 


familiar mark, melted now into deepened flesh-tints. 
Hers was not the merry-faced joy of a girl anticipating 
a frolic ; but the joy of a heart that, having been de- 
pressed, now trembles with too much exaltation ; at 
such a time, tears are not far off. 

“ How lonely you must have been !” cried Lough- 
borough, involuntarily. He was too deep a reader of 
human nature not to observe the signs of the human 
countenance and to consider what they signified. He 
knew that one of the weaknesses as well as one of the 
charms of this young girl was her dependence upon 
sympathy. 

“Yes, but not now.” To youth, memory is a 
dwarf; anticipation, a giant; in age, the case is re- 
versed. “ I am intensely happy now.” 

Her nostrils vibrated gently to take in the air. A 
multitude of expressions drifted across her face, a 
multitude of possibilities thrilled within her bosom. 
Diana overflowed with promises ; would she keep any 
of them? Certain people impress you with wonder, 
surprise, doubt, expectation. Diana was one of these. 
For this moment, however, she and the tripping mare 
were as happy as two young animals could be. Lough- 
borough was not. Passionately a doctor, he was 
divinely a man; and, to his far-reaching mind, the 
present moment did not suffice. The present should 
be the entrance to the future ; but just now the avenue 
of the present did not appear to lead forward to the 
future he desired. 

“ Impossible for you to know how often I have 
thought of you alone at the Valley Farm.” 

“ But you did not come ?” 


274 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Diana turned toward him. He did not answer, but 
kept his head resolutely bent away from her. He 
looked at the bevelled edges of the snow, deep-piled 
upon the banks between which they flew along, — now 
straight, now taking a bend in the road, with utmost 
speed; and still he was entirely conscious of those 
beseeching eyes. 

“ And I ; how often have I thought of you too.” 

Diana believed she was using the candor of friend- 
ship ; but are the beseeching glance and the yearning 
voice to be measured by that standard ? Still, Lough- 
borough did not answer, and Diana pursued recklessly. 

“ It was you who made Pughtown endurable to me, 
Dr. Loughborough. You opened my eyes to what is 
patriotic, human, in the people about me. Do you not 
know that I feel within me a richer Diana than the 
one you first knew ? Then why did you leave your 
work half-finished ? Why did you never come ? Do 
you know it is nearly two months since we have met ? 
then by accident.” 

Here was an appeal which could no longer be re- 
sisted. Friendship was unmasked, the familiar 
features of Love were now too plainly visible. Lough- 
borough was quickened to speech. 

“ How could I come ?” he cried, “ when to come was 
treason; when to come was the degradation of love 
into treachery. Yes, love ; that is it. I have made 
you know now, Diana, what I myself was only in part 
aware of.” 

You would have thought that Loughborough was 
making a confession of crime, he spoke so grimly, in- 
stead of a declaration of love. On flew the happy 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


275 


mare westward ; the clouds were piled in the sky very 
much as the snow was piled upon the earth, — one 
seemed sister to the other. On the western horizon, 
the great opal -colored heaven brightened into dull 
pink. Besides Loughborough, only the few Gothic- 
pointed firs that marked North Bend could overhear 
Diana as she echoed the word, u Love ;” and then she 
added, with open directness, — 

“ Yes, we both felt it. We had to know it. What 
one feels, one knows. Love me for this hour.” 

“ If I love you for an hour, I swear I shall not 
stop short of eternity, Diana. Do you understand ?” 

The cords of self-restraint were snapped. There 
was no more grimness. Resolution changed its color 
from white to deepest rose. Diana had seen Lough- 
borough kind and genial, but she had never before 
realized how he would look when voluntarily loving. 
He leaned towards her ; her eyes leaped to his, but 
were struck back by the light in his. They sank 
wounded behind lids against which they beat like 
frightened birds. If sight had been snatched from her 
then, she could never forget that look. It was enough 
to feed on forever. It is not to be contained in an 
epithet ; for it was the touch of spirits, — a revela- 
tion, an ascension, a transfiguration. She realized, 
trembling in the dark of closed lids, what heaven is, 
the soul, eternity. He laid his great fur-mittened 
hand over her two, which were clasped under the 
buffalo-robe. 

“ Say quickly ; is it now and forever ?” But Diana, 
womanlike, having gained her point, drew back. 

“ You startle me,” she whispered. “ Forever? That 


276 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


takes away my breath. Let me think.” Then she 
murmured, “ Lou-i-sy.” 

This name was no longer a check to Loughborough, 
he having once overleaped the barrier. With Diana, 
it was otherwise. She had tempted him to overspring 
the mark honor had set for him. Then Love, fairly 
roused and recognized, instead of putting conscience to 
sleep, waked it up. Together they had tasted the 
sweets of rebellion. She felt happy, satisfied, exalted. 
She shook her head, murmuring again, regretfully, as 
a caution against their passion, the name “ Lou-i-sy.” 

Loughborough moved impatiently. “I should grieve 
to pain that good soul,” he cried ; “ but false I will not 
be to her. Marriage, now, with her would be treason. 
It is you I love, Diana.” 

“Pain her? You shall not, Launce.” 

Diana’s voice played about the name of the man she 
loved, making music in the ears of both. Up to this 
time, in their intercourse, she had been the obeying 
principle ; now, however, since Love had spoken and 
answered, she felt strong with the strength of tw r o, 
strong enough for sacrifice. 

“No; you shall not pain that pure soul through 
me,” she repeated. 

“ But, Diana, is there under heaven a pain like un- 
answered love ? Should I condemn Lou-i-sy to that, it 
is false honor you condemn me to ” 

“Think yourself back to the time before I came. 
Were you not happy then? If not, you were at least 
serene. You are engaged to a woman who adores you. 
She nursed you to life. You are hers by gratitude.” 

“ I did obey gratitude until I knew what love was ; 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


277 


now I obey the master. It is too late to plead for 
Lou-i-sy, now. I myself plead for her during these 
last two months ; for then I was not quite certain what 
was love, what passion.” 

Diana interrupted, with “ Ah, but I know what is 
love ; what passion.” Her pride tapered to exquisite 
gentleness. “ Don’t you see, Launce, it is because I do 
love, — no passion, — that I am willing, determined, to 
resign you.” 

“ How can we unsay what we have said ? My love 
is not worth the having, if it is for an hour. Put 
away the woman’s fancies. You, yourself, asked me 
for an hour’s love. I offer you an eternity’s.” He 
thought her perverse. 

“Do you know, Dr. Loughborough,” she began, 
solemnly, “ that Lou-i-sy would die if she lost you ? 
even if she doubted you ? She is one of the women to 
pine away with a broken heart. Did you not tell me 
this much of the inelastic Hessian nature? No; I 
have had my lesson. I ” 

“ You would find a hundred consolations,” answered 
Loughborough, attending to that part of Diana’s 
remark which referred to herself. 

“ You wilfully misunderstand me.” Her tone and 
manner implied rebuke. Loughborough wondered at 
her, wonder sublimed to reverence ; by this she felt 
kindled to the pitch of heroism that could have swung 
her over a precipice into the chasm beneath. 

“ Lou-i-sy has her heroism, I have mine. Mine in- 
volves moral courage. I accept the love which you 
gave me for an hour, — no more ; forever after, friend- 
ship ; nothing less than friendship.” 

24 


278 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Diana had a vision of Loughborough being her 
partner in the heavenward, not in the earthward, flight. 
She was strung up as if fed on wine. 

“ Yes, I will help you to stand up to that promise 
you made years ago to the woman you are expecting to 
marry in a few weeks. There, do you understand me, 
now ?” 

But Loughborough’s understanding had to be helped 
out by a sublimity of expression which shot across her 
whole person and gathered her away from him as in a 
white cloud. There are times when the most submis- 
sive woman exercises supreme dominion ; this moment 
was hers. He cried out, “ Diana, beloved, be mine ; 
my wife. Ours only is the true marriage.” 

But this was not the time for urging. Diana 
motioned him from her with a determined arm, her 
countenance whitened, not reddened, by its purified 
flame, her voice thrilling with resolve. “ Never. 
Lou-i-sy has her love, and that only ; we have, you 
and I, our love, — and something else. No ; it may be 
a mistake, but I will not ruin a helpless soul. I will 
be strong. Take me home, quick, Dr. Loughborough.” 

Diana buried her face in her hands, while Lough- 
borough, in silence, turned the horses’ heads and guided 
them forward on the smooth, white, hard track towards 
the Yalley Farm. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


279 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Miss Rebecca Fawnystawk was given to fits of 
self-depreciation, which was another way of deprecia- 
ting somebody else. She made of herself a scape-goat 
upon which to vent her disapprobation of the rest of 
the world. We can afford to be suspicious of virtue 
when excessive, it is merely another name for the 
opposite vice. Character is the subtlest arid finest 
kind of architecture, and the laws of proportion hold 
nowhere more rigorously than in the building up of it. 

“Lou-i-sy,” said Miss Rebecca Fawnystawk, one 
morning, as the two ladies sat sewing behind the 
splendid mass of geraniums at the dining-room window, 
“how come the doctor hasn’t turned up of late? 
Where have he been a-keepin’ of himself?” 

Lou-i-sy did not look up from the bit of white 
muslin she was laying in minute plaits, as she answered, 
“ He’s busy, Cousin ’Becca.” 

“ ’Pears to me he’s most too busy for a man as is to 
be married a week come next Monday.” 

Miss Fawnystawk’s lips were pinched together, as if 
an immense pressure of words lay behind them. 

“ I know how busy we be, Cousin ’Becca ; and a 
man has a heap more things to look after than a 
woman.” Lou-i-sy’s needle flew along the line of 
the plaits like a silver streak. 

“ Yes, a lick too many, I should say, when he’s two 
women to look after instead o’ one.” 


280 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Miss Rebecca’s tongue had been itching to get these 
words said for a good while ; now, that they were out, 
her nerves relaxed from their tension. 

“ Cousin ’Becca, what do you mean ?” 

Lou-i-sy’s hands lay idle in the plaits, and she lifted 
a face drawn into puzzled lines. 

“ Anybody could see it, considerin’ it’s as plain as 
the nose on your face. Only you, Lou-i-sy Fawny- 
stawk, you’ve got yours into your teapots and your 
patty-pans, — everything ’ceptin’ what’s going on around 
you.” 

" It — what, Cousin ’Becca ?” 

In Lou-i-sy’s eyes of soft blue there was a compul- 
sion which Miss Rebecca dared not resist. 

“ It ? Why, it’s as plain as pie-crust that the doctor’s 
a-hangin’ around that girl over at Fontainses. You 
may call her cousin, but she’s no kin on the Fawny- 
stawk side, I’m proud to say. And she’s no cousin 
worthy to mention, neither, ef she can have the man as 
is going to marry you a week come next Monday tied 
to her apron-string.” 

“ Are you talkin’ about Diany, Cousin ’Becca ?” 

“ Who else but she, I’d like to know, ’ud have the 
cheek to be settin’ up first to Capting McElroy, then 
to Dr. Loughborough ?” 

“ Where did you hear all this yarn, Cousin ’Becca ?” 

“ Why, Pughtown’s agog with it, and Susan Alice 
Spangler is outdone. She says that there’ll be no 
chance for the girls as is born and bred in the neighbor- 
hood to get a husband until they get shet of that sassy 
critcher.” 

“ Cousin ’Becca,” answered Lou-i-sy, after a pause 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


281 


and making a huge effort to be calm, shown by red 
color on her white throat and blue swollen veins on her 
temples. Such blueness of veins ! they might have been 
fed by the inward fountain that shed such violet into 
her widely-opened, dismayed eyes, — “ Cousin ’Becca, 
you had ought to be ashamed to listen to such as 
Miss Spangler. Many’s the times I’ve heard you say 
she had more tongue than was good for her.” 

Lou-i-sy’s eloquence was not that of language ; but 
she had an eloquence of body, a chaste blush, a vir- 
tuous scorn of expression, to which no onlooker could 
be insensible. Miss Rebecca murmured something 
about duty, to which her niece replied, drawing up 
her plump figure with much dignity, “ Duty? Well, 
mine is plain ; and I’ll hear no one who has aught 
to say against the doctor ; no, not if it is my own flesh 
and blood as says it.” 

When Dr. Fawnystawk came in to dinner after his 
professional rounds, he cried out, a little snappishly, 
seeing his daughter bowed down over a lapful of 
needle-work, “ Well, young ’ooman, how’s the weddin’- 
gown ?” 

“ Finished, pappy, all but the collar and cuffs and 
sewing of the waist to the skirt.” 

The voice was not without a chirrup of satisfaction in 
it which irritated Dr. Fawnystawk. “ Well, you’d better 
leave it whar it stands, or turn it into a keepsake, or 
somethin’ of that sort; for, ’cordin’ to Susan Alice 
Spangler and them as says they know, you’ll not have 
use for it.” 

“ Pappy, I’ll thank you to listen to no harm of 
Dr. Loughborough ; and I’ll take it kindly if you’ll 
24 * 


282 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


say nothing about my marriage with him, unless it’ll 
be to give me your blessing when the time comes.” 

Lou-i-sy laid her hand upon the chair which presided 
over the dumplings, now steaming forth savory, peace- 
making influences from a platter at the head of the 
table. It was wonderful how much flint could get into 
that serene eye, and how much intention could pierce 
by means of that gentle voice. Dr. Fawnystawk darted 
an acute look from under his gray, furzy eyebrows. 
He knew stubbornness, and that it was a birthright 
bequeathed by himself to his child. 

“ Come, sit down, sit down,” he answered, sooth- 
ingly; “ don’t get your back up, Lou-i-sy, ’ooman. 
The Lord knows I want you to get married in the 
biggest hurry ever you can. I wish it was to-morrow 
’stead of a week come next Monday. I’m a-lookin’ 
forrard to my Sabbath day when the doctor gets his 
buggy hitched up for good in our barn. Lord, child, 
I’m pleased as pie, ’ceptin’ for his runnin’ down of the 
calomel. But you can’t have everything to suit ; and 
many a man ’ll have to get to heaven before he knows 
the good there is in calomel.” 

Dr. Fawnystawk kept up a running commentary 
upon calomel during the meal. When it was over and 
everything put in order, Lou-i-sy returned to her wed- 
ding-gown, nor stopped until it was completed. At 
dusk she carried it to the guest-chamber, laid it down 
upon the counterpane of the four-poster bed, folded 
together the sleeves in a beautiful white embrace, 
pulled out the lace edging, smoothed down the tucks, 
stood back an instant in reverential homage before this 
symbol of so much heart’s joy, then threw over it a 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


283 


fair large sheet, and, going on tip-toe out of the chamber, 
left it to its white solitude. 

That evening Loughborough came. Lou-i-sy, sit- 
ting alone in the parlor, heard him fasten his horse to 
the block, unlatch the gate, and walk up the porch- 
steps. Her sense of hearing was acuter than usual, 
and there was an unwonted dilation in her eyes. 
The physician’s glance would have diagnosed her as 
nervous this evening ; the lover’s glance would have 
perceived the very rapture of love and reverence in her 
countenance. There are times when one realizes the 
inward fires more clearly than at others ; manifestations 
of the finer parts of one’s nature are unequal. To 
Lou-i-sy, this was the real wedding-day. She felt the 
sense of ownership and of oneness with him in its 
fullest force. As soon as he entered the parlor she saw 
the cloud upon his brow, gloomy intention in his eye ; 
something was upon his mind that he was resolved to 
be rid of. His greeting was brief, the prelude to some- 
thing disagreeable, perhaps. Lou-i-sy, quicker and 
bolder than usual, thought that she divined the cause ; 
indeed, she also had something upon her mind which 
she was resolved to be rid of. She would not be sepa- 
rated an instant, but crossed the room, and, with a 
tender-armed embrace, lifted to his a countenance 
lucent with candor. She was not given to demon- 
stration. There was something now throughout her 
whole person that startled Loughborough into silence 
and into a kind of passionate pity. Words upon his 
lips were restrained. She spoke first in a delicate 
whisper, — 

“Doctor, I have finished my wedding-dress. No 


284 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


one has set a stitch in it but me. It is all mine ; and 
I am yours as fast as if I had already worn and the 
preacher blessed me in it.” 

Entreaty was not habitual with Lou-i-sy. She 
entreated now, but Loughborough stood beside her 
dumb. Uninvited, she leaned her white temple against 
his shoulder and slipped a cold hand into his. What 
a moment for Loughborough ! — upon his arm leaned 
his betrothed, another woman knocking at the door of 
his heart. She went on with innocent ramblings, — 

“ I laid it away in the best room. It looks so white 
and so pretty, I want you to see it, now, doctor ; for, 
on our wedding-day, you might be too hurried, you 
know, to have half a glimpse. Dear heart, the time 
until then is wearisome. They’ve been trying to 
make me believe harm of you. But I’d shame to keep 
a secret from you, my husband a week come next 
Monday ; for all that, I no more believe what they 
said than I’d believe God wouldn’t hear me when I 
say my prayers.” 

Loughborough felt Lou-i-sy tremble and the hand 
his held turn colder. He heard a suffocating little 
sound, like the beginning of a sob, upon the words, 
“ Oh, doctor, my dearie ; it isn’t only my love, but my 
life that is yours.” 

Her weight became heavier against him, and he 
opened his arms in time to receive her . swooning into 
them. The heart plays fantastic tricks with human 
beings, and Lou-i-sy’s had been under a strain. The 
relief her emotions found in speech brought exhaustion, 
a moment’s unconsciousness, nothing more. A mere 
rush of blood headwards, righted almost immediately. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


285 


Very quickly Loughborough saw her open her eyes 
and smile contentedly when she saw herself sheltered 
in his arms. He forget himself — Diana, everything — 
in the physician’s interest. He realized what Diana’s 
delicate instinct had perceived sooner, — that there are 
women to whom a disappointment in love means death, 
and that Lou-i-sy was one of these. 

Spring came, weaving a delicate embroidery of 
grass-spire over the Valley hillsides and of fruit-blos- 
soms into the Valley orchards. Everywhere was an 
outbreaking of tenderly-timorous Beauty ; but Diana, 
usually quick to perceive, had no eyes for it. The 
coloring seemed to her faint and spiritless, a pigment 
mixed with tears. What did she care for the delicate 
green lace stirred by spring’s palpitating bosom ? The 
world has agreed to the femineity of spring, deliciously 
sensuous, like youthful but self-conscious womanhood ; 
full of languor, enervation, enticement, wantonness, 
alluring, subtly immodest, albeit innocent. Man is 
forever singing hymns to woman’s delicately tempting 
carnality. When shall we stop this? for not until 
then shall we be pure. To Diana, spring was a 
mournful virgin of the Ophelia type. To Lough- 
borough — well, we will not say. Probably he was 
hardly conscious of the season, thinking only of the' 
date, hard and mechanical, which was to fix his wed- 
ding-day. Certain it is the three were preoccupied, and 
the dark cloud that had settled down seemed only to 
roll away when that day, notable in Loughborough’s 
calendar, arrived. 

They were married. 

On the wedding-day Lou-i-sy attended to her house- 


286 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


hold duties with usual precision ; she saw to having 
the* ham sliced, the currant-wine decanted, and the 
bride’ s-cake set out. Punctually, at the hour appointed 
for the ceremony, she was ready, with foot on the stair- 
case, to descend. Diana held her back for a moment, 
to adjust the festoon of the blond wedding- veil ; and, 
in doing so, kissed the warm cheek, in which, however, 
there was no unwonted flush, no quiver of nervousness. 
The truth was, Lou-i-sy Fawnystawk had been mar- 
ried in spirit months and months ago. In the cere- 
mony she saw nothing but the demand for a little 
extra housekeeping and some prudent foresight. At 
the foot of the staircase stood Loughborough, paler 
than ordinary, his arms folded. He looked up, as the 
ladies stepped down towards him, and took in, first the 
vision of Diana, a breast-knot of cold, white blood-root 
blossoms in her bodice ; then of Lou-i-sy, calm and fair, 
as one of the Virgins of the famous Madonna cabinet 
in the Dresden Gallery. 

“ Come, doctor,” she said, when she was beside him, 
“ I am ready. We’ve the ceremony, you mind, and the 
dinner, and the healths, and the train to catch.” 

Her hand was on his arm, and in a breathing-space 
they stood before the priest. 

“She looks good enough to eat,” was Miss Sarah 
Jane’s verdict, when, after the service, this lady found 
herself sipping currant-wine in the dining-room. 

“ Relieved-like,” answered Mrs. Spangler. “ A 
weight off her mind, I should say. She’s Mrs. Lough- 
borough, now. Good luck to you, Mrs. Loughborough, 
and you, too, doctor. Yes, I’ll see that V’nessy gets a 
bit o’ weddin’-cake. The Lord bless you for all you’ve 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


287 


done for her, doctor. Maybe she^l be a-sendin' you a 
bit o' hers, some day, eh ?" 

The good lady ha-haed, and there was no end of 
jokes, as is usual on like occasions. 

Then came the time for leave-taking ; for a minute, 
Loughborough and Diana stood together alone on the 
porch. He bent forward, took her two hands, and held 
them in the large warm grasp she knew so well. A 
volume seemed pent up in his eyes, but the words did 
not fall to his lips. Diana's eyes ran over him in 
liquid light. When he found voice at last, it was for 
a speech, commonplace, except for the sincerity which 
rang in his tone. “ If ever you want a friend, Diana, 
I am your friend ; if ever you want a home, Lou-i-sy's 
is yours. Will you remember?" 

The shimmer of a gray dress, a gray-gloved hand on 
Loughborough's shoulder ; it was the bride who had 
come up, unobserved. The hands of the other two 
fell apart, a chasm sunk darkly cruel between them, 
bridged by the one word — friend. It was such a bridge, 
narrow, sharp, a sword-blade, as Mahomet describes 
between heaven and earth. There was all the sweet 
monotonousness of childhood in the bride's voice when 
she added, — 

“ Yes, Diany, we both love you. Come and stay 
with us always, won't you ? Then we have everything 
we want ; then the doctor will find some one 'round 
able to talk to him better than I can. I can love 
and take care of him, but I'm not much for talking. 
Come, dear, do." 

Diana's face, strained before, now quivered. She 
pressed to her, for a moment, the woman for whom she 


288 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


had renounced so much, and then turned hastily aside 
to hide the tear that leaped from her eye. 

Love is every man’s and woman’s birthright, but all 
do not get it ; perhaps they do not work for it. He 
who wears love’s wreath does so with smiling lips and 
glorying cheeks ; he who does not, creeps through the 
world jaded and dreary. How was it to be with Diana ? 


CHAPTER XVII. 

Dear Di, — I have not heard from you since you 
have been buried in the land of the rebel ; but it is 
partly iny fault, for I have been- sick of myself and of 
everybody else. In this extremity, I turn to you, the 
freshest, most spontaneous, and adaptable of all my 
kinspeople. I am suddenly overcome with a longing 
to see you, to hear you play. I want to lie upon my 
lounge and be steeped in Chopin as you would embody 
him to me. I have been trying mind-cure and the 
graver studies. Unavailing. I began Grote ; but it 
made me feel that the Spartans only were wise, because 
they abandoned to death their weak offspring, in order 
that they might not grow up to a wretched invalidism, 
as I have done. What seemed cruelty was, in reality, 
kindness. History makes me giddy, for I cannot see 
where seeming ends and reality begins, Thirty years 
of spinal complaining have made me morbid ? Well, 
yes, I suppose so. But I could have been so happy, as 
happy as you, Di, with your straight limbs and your 
strong nerves. Yes, I am sure I was born for pleas- 
ure ; but my enemy, a sickly body, has balked me of 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


289 


it. I was born to have lovers, too. You need not 
smile, Diana, at my fifteen years of seniority. In 
matters of sentiment, there is no time, no age. Who 
would waste a thought, save one of pity, upon a puny 
lamester, such as I am, pinned year in, year out, to a 
couch of thorns. I have some pride, — no one should 
ever marry me for money. There was a man who 
tried to, once ; so I drew him on and then exposed his 
avarice without pity. Detestable as this experience 
was, it stirred me to the liveliest sensations. It fur- 
nished me with the excitement which I had been 
craving; and when all was over, it made life for 
a while seem hopelessly flat. The doctor drops in, as 
he has done for years, prescribes and smiles, smiles and 
prescribes ; so assured in his callousness, that he does 
not care a button if I think him a humbug. My heart, 
my mind, gnaws each upon itself. They tell me I 
want rest. What have I done since I was born, but 
rest ? They tell me I want recreation. Oh, the aim- 
lessness of the search after recreation ! I hate the 
word. What I want is work — man’s birthright ; but 
even that is denied me, for I do not know how to find 
it. Had I been obliged to strive and to labor in the 
first years, I might, at least, have found peace. Happy 
is the man who finds his use in the world while he is 
still young. Is there a reason for the existence of 
every creature God has made? or are some allowed 
to live merely as sign-posts pointing the way — to be 
avoided by others? I am in New York. Will you 
come and give me the medicine of a fresh, young spirit? 

Yours in depression, 

Cynthia Curzewell. 
n t 25 


290 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Here was a chance of escape from Puglitown, with 
its painful memories. True, it was merely an ex- 
change of depressing companionships ; instead of Aunt 
Mary’s meagre, unquestioning mournfulness, Cynthia 
Curze well’s wider, more analytic selfism was presented. 
Diana chose the latter. 

She spent the first four weeks at Miss Curzewell’s 
in endless playing upon the piano. The invalid, upon 
a straw lounge in an adjoining sitting-room, called for 
nocturne, mazurka, and polonaise. It was a carnival 
of melody, the very bacchanal of low spirits. Miss 
Curzewell relished this weirdness ; for she held up a 
cracked mirror to nature, and saw a kind of picturesque 
monster reflected therein. But Chopin did not help 
Diana ; she required something that appealed more to 
the mind. The mind is the best refrigerator for over- 
heated feelings. She had gone the year before to 
Virginia vague and with the artist’s instincts half- 
fledged. She had risen to the height of making a 
great sacrifice, and she felt as if she had been lifted for 
life. Renunciation is one of the greatest propellers of 
the soul ; truly has it been said that “ he who loses his 
life for my sake, shall find it.” One morning, she 
turned over the leaves of a Beethoven album. Lough- 
borough had spoken with admiration of this master. 
She worked for two hours; the result was, for the 
first time, a kind of wholesome seriousness taking the 
place of a desolation which had made her wildly restless. 

“ Diana,” Miss Curzewell said, looking earnestly at 
the musician as she took her place upon a stool beside 
the invalid’s lounge, “ you threw your whole soul into 
that music. Do you know, it has done me good ?” 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


291 


“This is the only time that I have thought ; for 
weeks, I have been feeling, nothing but feeling. Cyn- 
thia, music seems to be a measuring of the heart-throbs 
of the universe. When I play Chopin, my soul meets 
man’s ; when I play Beethoven, my soul meets God’s. 
That is religion, and this is what I need more of, I 
suppose. I have been a heathen.” 

Miss Curzewell gave one of her deep sighs, and then 
said, suddenly, “ Di, I will take you to Germany, and 
let you study there, if you will go ; will you ?” 

Diana’s hands went up to screen her face ; her an- 
swer was a burst of tears ; but the two ladies under- 
stood each other. 

Did Loughborough and Diana meet ? Yes, fifteen 
years later. Meanwhile, several fine boys came to en- 
large his family. Was his life wrecked because he did 
not marry the woman his heart would have chosen when 
it spoke strongest within him ? By no means. Men like 
Loughborough may fall, but they pick themselves up ; 
they may go astray, but they do not suffer shipwreck ; 
for them there’s always land ahoy ! As a physician, he 
stood among the first ; and, perhaps, science gained in 
that sentiment lost something. However that may be, 
Lou-i-sy found no fault with him as a husband. And 
his native State was proud of him as a man ; for the 
greater includes the less. A truly good man cannot 
fail in the lesser relationships of life. 

Changes came from time to time in the Pughtown 
neighborhood, all of which were made known to Diana by 
faithful correspondents at home, Lou-i-sy chiefly. By 
a strange contrariety of fortune, Miss Mary Jane 
Fontaine married ’Lias Fawnystawk a year after 


292 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


Lou-i-sy’s union with Loughborough. The younger 
couple were going to remove to Richmond. 'Lias 
said he must have a housekeeper who would take the 
same interest in things as if they were her own. The 
choosing lay between Miss Sarah Jane and Miss Mary 
Jane. Mary Jane was the least objectionable. 

“ No, Lou-i-sy, child, I couldn't stand it with your 
Cousin 'Becca. Her tongue is as long as a fence-rail, 
and as lively as a mill-clapper. Miss Sarah Jane, 
she's so nervous-like, she'd keep me in a swivet, half 
my time. I haven't got many years to live, but I 
want them quiet ones; not a great coming in and 
going out, and such like. If you are got to leave 
me, I'm going to get the next quietest person I can 
find. Miss Mary Jane Fontaine are she. Her shoes 
don't creak, and she moves round the house nice and 
pleasant-like." 

To Lou-i-sy's question, “Do you think she'd ever 
marry any one, pappy?" came the answer, “Yes. I 
ain't got this old and not to know what I'm a-talk- 
ing about. I asked her once if she thought that 
sharing her misery would make it less, and she said, 
then, she thought maybe it would, and that if ever 
she had a call to marry, or share her lot in life with 
any one, she'd do just what the Lord told her to do ; 
so I'll up to the Valley Farm this night and give 
her the Lord's message." 

The Fates willed that Miss Mary Jane should 
marry ; that Miss Sarah Jane should live on single ; 
and that Grat Fontaine should die before gray hairs 
came to cloud the brilliancy of his burnished hair 
and beard. His death came about by his own ob- 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


293 


stinacy, — a slight cold, for which Loughborough pre- 
scribed ; for Grat got into the Legislature, and spent 
a winter in Richmond, near Lou-i-sy and her hus- 
band. Loughborough’s orders were disregarded, his 
advice laughed at, his medicine not taken, and Grattan, 
one-sidedly clever, handsome, and pig-headed to the 
last, killed himself by sheer neglect. “ It is a case 
of suicide,” was Loughborough’s verdict ; “ he treated 
his body as a slave instead of as a friend.” 

“ Poor Uncle Grattan !” thought Diana, with tears, 
when she heard the news. “He has just missed being 
a great man, and all because of that cross-grained streak 
in him. Let me beware of that, for I am a Fontaine, 
too.” 

In the summer of 18 — , Loughborough, en route 
for Paris, stopped over night at Baden-Baden. In 
the reading-room of the H6tel de Bade he sat down 
to await the announcement of dinner. The only other 
occupant of the room was a gentleman, with head 
bent over a brochure. Presently, the latter tossed the 
pamphlet aside and stood up to indulge a yawn, which 
engulfed him. Out of this hygienic spasm he came, with 
eyes fixed upon Loughborough. Handing him the 
brochure with an exaggerated politeness, akin to bur- 
lesque, the stranger said, in fair English, “ Will you 
read this, sir? The question is land monopoly. Well 
treated; by an A-mazV-ican. One of your country- 
men, I take it ?” A jewelled hand sailed over a well- 
pomatumed head and then caressed a wide expanse 
of whiskers. Without waiting for answer, however, 
he went on. “A wonderful nation, the A-mair-ican. 
Such a weltanschau. It may be said to be the nation 
25 * 


294 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


that has invented Liberty, and not behind-hand in the 
arts, either. We have in this town, now, Mees Fon- 
taine, the Beethoven interpreter. She gave us a concert, 
last night. Ravishing. You know her ?” 

Loughborough might have smiled at being thus 
caught in his nationality, without having uttered a word, 
on the witness of a moment’s glance from a stranger ; 
but his ear was absorbed with the name Fontaine. 
She was here. Where? how far off? The questions 
thronging to his mind were not put, and the Prussian 
proceeded to expatiate upon the distinguished artist, 
tossing off from his tongue a language enriched by 
numerous technical terms. Praise of the lady argued, 
on his part, knowledge of music, so he praised her. 
“Last night was an hour of enthusiasm. Chamber 
music ; a Largo with Stroschki, the first violin of the 
Imperial orchestra ; then a transcription by Liszt ; that 
was divine . Scene-painting in music. Her chords 
give out a constellation of sparks ; visible, you know ; 
then the Harmonious Blacksmith was the encore. No 
Beethoven, last night. She says it is sacrilege to play 
him sometimes. These artists will have their moods ; 
you must allow them, for the sake of the afflatus.” 

Loughborough was shocked into silence by this vol- 
uble wind-bag at his side. He could not help wonder- 
ing whether the winsome girl 6f his memory had 
charged herself with the artist’s jargon, too ; and 
whether she glorified form and whim and mood. It 
was not the artist that made his pulse quicken and his 
eyes gather light and warmth; it was the woman. 
What had fifteen years done with her? Had they 
caressed or scourged, been friends or foes ? How did 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


295 


she appear to the casual observer, — her arms, her beau- 
tiful arms, the dainty chin of the girl of eighteen ? He 
murmured something about a foreign country, the 
climate of Germany, ending with the point-blank ques- 
tion, — 

“ Does Miss Fontaine look well, — strong? I 

mean ” 

The.Prussian dismissed the question with a growl, a 
finger-snap, and then deigned the words, “ Look ! You 
cannot circumscribe an artist’s look with a paltry word 
of one syllable. She looks a thousand ways in the 
course of a day ; handsome, plain, dreamy, wistful, 
thoughtful, gay, frowning. She makes you reflect her 
feelings; she carries you along with her. She is a 
creature of sympathetic imagination, the true artist 
spirit, you know ; but she works too hard, by heaven ! 
The key-board is a willlow-branck in her hand. I 
have heard her give the Sonata Appassionata. It was 
wunderschon. Never have I heard such a climax from 
the woman’s hand ; but she works too hard, sir, by 
heaven !” (with a sudden turn). “ How pure your 
A-mair-ican women are. Mees Fontaine is the soul of 
discreetness.” 

Two fingers of the Franco-Prussian’s hand flew away 
from his lips with a kiss upon them. Loughborough’s 
eyes put a direct question. 

“ Yes, the vair-y soul of discreetness. She counts 
her lovers upon the fingers of both hands, but she keeps 
them at a distance. Stroschki trembles in her pres- 
ence, — when he is not playing, of course.” 

“ Does Stroschki ?” Loughborough’s words were 

blown into a thousand inaudible fragments by an 


296 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


explosion of sputtering mirth which rolled out of the 
Prussian’s sandy whiskers. “ No, by George !” A cos- 
mopolite, he indulged in expletives imported from every 
country, England preferred. “Stroschki would give 
his fiddle-bow, his Amanti, to be allowed a lover’s 
privilege for one brief evening.” 

The stranger, no doubt, would have proceeded to 
the itemizing of a lover’s privileges, had he been suf- 
fered; but Loughborough rose to his feet, and said, 
sententiously, — 

“ Where is Miss Fontaine, now ? Do you know ?” 

“ Do they admire the lady in A-mair-ica as we do 
here?” 

The stranger was unwilling to lose a patient hearer. 
“ Oh, yes ; but she is not there much ; she has lived 
in Europe mostly for the last fifteen years ; but where 
is she staying, now, do you know ?” 

The information was given, and Loughborough re- 
paired immediately to the private hotel where Miss 
Fontaine had apartments. Miss Curzwell was at 
home, but not Miss Fontaine. The servant had seen 
this lady, alone, book in hand, take the road to the 
Nymphen-See, her favorite retreat ; perhaps she might 
be there. 

Loughborough turned back to the street, and walked 
deliberately into a shop containing musical instru- 
ments. Here , he purchased a flute, and then he, also, 
took the road to the Nymphen-See. Years of care, 
of scientific endeavor, of patient yet cheerful work, 
of self-suppression, fell away from him as at the 
word of magic. He strode along the valley of the 
Oos, flute in hand ; sprang up a hill-side, black with 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


297 


larch and spruce, and clambered along, in its odorous 
shade, to the wall of the ravine, into which he pro- 
ceeded to descend. The Nymphen-See lay below, — a 
spot to long for when life overheats the brain and 
makes one desire passionately for coolness and the 
repose which falling water flings around it, resting 
and refreshing at the same moment. A ledge reached, 
Loughborough saw the lady he was seeking. She 
was seated upon a stone, in the very heart of the 
ravine ; but the plash of the waterfall that drew from 
the pool its surplusage of water drowned the noise 
of his footsteps as he approached. He went lower 
and looked down into one of those closets which 
nature makes for a repository of inspirations, an 
oratory, a shrine, whatever you will, in which you 
may approach her. It was a spot where a muse 
might meet some favored mortal, where a lover might 
whisper his truest thought to his beloved. A trib- 
utary of the Oos had hollowed out of the rock a per- 
fect chamber, and then had gathered itself into a deep, 
limpid, circular pool at the bottom, where a pave- 
ment of large round stones showed brilliantly. Into 
this pool water poured by means of a narrow mossy 
conduit, sculptured by the runnels themselves in the 
stone, while, as we have said, the excess of water 
emptied itself out of the pool by means of a charming 
waterfall, which wrought a way for itself over fan- 
tastic stones. The pool lay undisturbed by this water- 
fall, still, sparkling as a jewel, very slightly dark- 
ened by the spruce-trees, whose fringe-work decked 
the beautifully rounded cliffs above, and mingled 
spice with the penetrating odor of freshness distilled 


298 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


from this mountain torrent. Loughborough felt ex- 
citement come in waves as he saw Diana alone, in this 
setting ; but he raised his flute to his lips and began, 
with infinite delicacy, to pipe a ditty that fell, like a 
fancy in a dream, upon Diana’s ear. He saw her 
bend forward, lift her head, her muscles tense, as these 
notes of “Lorina,” inwoven with echoes and faint 
repeatings of the cliff touched her ear and sank deep 
in her heart. To make himself heard as reality, and 
not audible fancy, he leaped down to a lower crag 
which abutted from the cliff directly above her head, 
still fluting, the rock still repeating, as he went. She 
rose to her feet at last, under the lash of conviction, 
took a few steps forward, then backward, and rang 
out, — 

“ Loughborough !” 

“ Diana !” was rung back from a niche, above, in a 
low, familiar, thrilling voice, and this was no echo. 
Diana’s eye, obeying her ear, took in the figure of a 
man, whose gray suit melted into the color of the rock, 
hardly a gunshot from her. 

She held out her arms; he sprang at once to her 
side and looked earnestly, longingly, into her face, to 
note the changes he might see, the welcome he might 
discover therein. Our surroundings are so much a. 
part of us that even feelings must be shaped to new 
settings. This was not Pughtown, but the Grand 
Duchy of Baden ; not the Valley of the Shenandoah, 
but the Valley of the Oos. A meeting had been lived 
by Diana a multitude of times in the last fifteen years ; 
but, now that it was really come about, it was to be 
commonplace, after all, like things that are mixed with 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


299 


flesh and blood ; not divine, as she had fancied. She gave 
her hand to be pressed, and sat down, with the question, — 

“ Where did you come from ?” 

“ From that crag just above your head.” 

“ Yes, of course, I know ; but before that ?” 

“ The medical convention.” 

“ Ah, yes, at Berlin.” A softly-breathed sigh, a wist- 
ful look, then one of reproach. “ But why did you not 
let me know ?” 

“ I came unexpectedly. Lou-i-sy did write.” 

“ And the letter is probably at the Poste Bestante, 
in Heidelberg, awaiting me ! You are alone. Lou-i-sy 
not with you ?” 

The answer was a negative shake of the head. u Ah, 
but I wish I had known you were here.” The sense 
of harmony in Diana made her shrink from being taken 
unawares, even in that which she desired before all other 
things. 

“ This meeting is a surprise to me, too, Diana ; but 
are you not glad to see me again after these long fifteen 
years ?” 

“ Yes, very glad, only it is so sudden.” She raised 
her hand to her forehead as if to brush away some 
delusion caused by a dream ; then with a swift transi- 
tion to the one person she felt she must always keep in 
mind, — 

“ How is Lou-i-sy ? Tell me about her. Has she 
changed ?” 

“ Considerably stouter; older, too. We have all 
grown old, Diana.” 

u Yes, time has left none of us alone ; the whole 
world may slight us, but not time.” 


300 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


He fixed her, for an instant, with his keen, observ- 
ing glance, then turned away sharply, as if hurt by too 
much sunlight. He had perceived, however, in the 
hollows under her eyes, those faintly purplish lines in- 
dicating the strain of previous years. 

Diana, on her part, had been embarrassed by the 
probing gaze ; so she flew, by means of conversation, 
to his domestic affairs, showing an interest dangerously 
strained. 

“ Your boys, Dr. Loughborough ; tell me about 
them. Who are they like ?” 

“ All five have copied their mother’s eyes and com- 
plexion ; but their dispositions the rascals have stolen 
from me. They are an unruly set, Diana” (he laughed) ; 
“ constant internal revolutions which start from absent- 
mindedness. We have a little girl now, too.” 

“ Have you ? I did not know. She is the youngest, 
then ? And what have you called her ? Is she like 
her mother, too?” Diana’s brows were drawn and 
anxious. She imagined Loughborough’s hand patting 
the set of little tow-heads, overtopping each other like 
steps. The Prussian might well have said that a 
thousand expressions succeeded each other upon her 
countenance in the course of a day ; and the effect in 
the eyes is strange when jealousy treads upon the heels 
of tenderness. 

“ No, poor little unfortunate ; they say she’s like me, 
nose and all. She’s named for her mother; but we 
call her Isa. Lou-i-sy in the first generation, Isa in 
the second, eh ?” 

Diana could not help smiling at Loughborough’s 
good-humored irony ; his home, his wife, his children 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


301 


fascinated her ; so she was still the questioner. u Is 
Lou-i-sy the same indefatigable housekeeper she used 
to be ?” 

“ Yes ; she attends to our domestic affairs, the 
church’s, and all the poor people’s in Richmond.” 

“ Ah, she is a good woman. What an excellent wife 
you have, Dr. Loughborough.” 

Seeing that he was expected to answer, Lough- 
borough said, “ Yes,” in rather a too downright way. 
Diana would have given anything in the world to 
know just how Loughborough stood with his wife ; 
and perhaps the curiosity was pardonable, though she 
did not call it curiosity, but friendship. 

“ Have you brought Lou-i-sy around to your way 
of looking at things ? She was always so docile, and 
yet so fixed in her ideas.” 

“ It would be ungenerous to make too great demands 
upon a wife’s dutifulness, Diana. Besides which, I 
never argue. Debate is, for the most part, a mere 
squabbling over terms and definitions ; all very well 
for lawyers, but not for husband and wife.” 

After a silence lasting some minutes, Diana asked, 
suddenly, — 

“ Am I much changed too, Dr. Loughborough ?” 

“ Changed, and not changed, Diana,” was Lough- 
borough’s answer. 

The physician could see that the woman had worked 
hard ; that she had lost instead of gained flesh ; there 
was a droop about the corners of the mouth, where 
they met the line which indents the cheek at it melting 
into the chin. This is the sign of much striving, and 
is dangerous to good looks. She was less pretty, more 
26 


302 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


interesting; less bewitching, more charming. There 
was less of allurement, yet more of power. At eigh- 
teen, women have passion ; at thirty, their feelings put 
on wings and fly upward, under the name of sentiment. 
Passion is a beast, a war-horse, if you like, headstrong, 
violent ; whereas sentiment is Pegasus, the horse that, 
having assumed wings, is able to mount. 

There was a change in Loughborough, too, which 
Diana’s eyes had been busily noting. She hardly 
regretted the wrinkles about the eyes, the greater 
prominence of the features, even an additional leatheri- 
ness of skin, for these imperfections marked but the 
more powerfully the sweet, strong, self-conquering 
nature which dwelt under them. Out of the vagueness 
of youth had come a startling definiteness; out of 
Chaos, Cosmos. Perhaps we do not realize that the 
work of creation is always taking place ; we err in 
thinking that it is confined to a single supernatural act. 
Loughborough had grown into a definiteness which 
broke over his nature, like May over a landscape, 
bringing his virtues into grand relief. Diana’s ex- 
pression said something to this effect; whereupon it 
became Loughborough’s turn to feel embarrassed. He 
began abruptly, by way of turning her thought from 
himself, — 

“You have asked no question about McElroy. 
How is that ? He was once a hero in your eyes.” 

“ I know that he is married to Vanessa Spangler, 
and can infer the rest.” (Her voice was freighted with 
indifference, seeing that she spoke of a man said to 
have been her hero once.) “ Does he dream still ?” 

“Yes, an opium-dream, for the most part. Mrs. 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


303 


McElroy runs their establishment. They have no 
child. McElroy sleeps half of his time, and, strange 
to say, keeps in fairly good health. Do you remember 
him with pleasure, Diana? He pleased you once, I 
think.” 

“Only my fancy, and fancy is a cold quality. I 
have often mistaken, in my life, the glamour for the 
thing it surrounded ?” 

“ That is the artist’s temptation. You have become 
a great artist. I thought you would. But have you 
made a god of your art ?” 

“ A thousand times, no ; but you influenced me, Dr. 
Loughborough. Do you remember how you gave me 
the new beatitude, Coleridge’s i Blessed is he that 
has found his true work.’ I believe I have found 
mine ; and, at first, I will admit to being intoxicated, 
and to not seeing the world clearly; afterwards, I 
rubbed my eyes, looked about me, and determined 
that, if I was to choose, I would rather develop into a 
well-rounded being than into even an artist. 1 have 
had to clip the wings of the artist that the woman 
might expand.” 

“ And this is the result of fifteen years’ devotion to 
music. You do not know how glad I am to hear you 
say this, Diana.” . 

Loughborough smiled pleasure; and his watchful 
eyes were agreeable features to study, for they were 
ever guiding him to new discoveries. Just now his 
perceptions were pleased by her improved style in 
speech, of a crystalline clearness, sparkling out, occa- 
sionally, into jewelled utterances. He had always 
admired lucidity, candor, and those virtues translucent 


304 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


to the splendid luminousness of Truth shining through 
them. She had chosen, as she said ; once he had 
thought not wisely, but the choice had imparted a 
nobility to her nature which she had not shown in 
earliest youth ; once she had nourished a religion 
caught in the toils of heredity, but her soul had tri- 
umphed over a stale faith, with the determination that 
it is better to love highly and lose, than less purely and 
wed. She had mounted, so that she and Lough- 
borough now stood on a level, looking into each other’s 
eyes. 

“ Yes,” she pursued, “ I would forget my notes this 
minute, rather than be the one-sided, deliciously- 
musical fool that ” 

“ That Stroschki is ?” 

Diana shook her head in the affirmative and laughed, 
but not gayly ; a sombre hue darkened her counte- 
nance. “ He is a violin on two legs ; a man crazed 
with genius ; who talks like a seraph about a fugue ; 
like a grown-up-child about other things.” 

Loughborough, in reply to this, murmured some- 
thing about rumors of her marriage, etc. Diana an- 
swered with a gesture of irritation before saying, 
“ With Stroschki, do you mean ? Every one speaks 
of us together. It is absurd. I thought you knew 
me better.” Then in words solemnly staccato, and 
with eyes fixed intently upon him, she added, “ Do you 
remember my telling you once that I should never 
marry ? Did you not believe me when I said that ?” 

Loughborough had no answer to this question ; 
words would have been coarse tools with which to 
express his feelings at this moment. All that was 


DIANA FONTAINE. 


305 


sweetest and tenderest in bis manhood went out to 
meet all that was sweetest and tenderest in her woman- 
hood. Renunciation because of love flashed its white 
wing against his spirit. He bowed his head in token 
that he did remember. 

“ I set up for myself,” she said, “ a standard years 
ago. No man but one has ever reached it. He was 
not for me. I would have no other.” Diana might 
have said more, but that her voice broke. It was a 
fatal moment for them both. Many men would have 
yielded to that ineffable longing. The kiss of passion, 
the whisper of love, would have found no witness in the 
eternal rocks and densely-black fir-trees around them. 
Nature alone was present, and nature urges to candor. 
But Loughborough was not to be tempted from his 
iron calm. If Diana had wished to try her power, it 
was but a moment’s weakness, for the next she turned 
away, leaned over the stream, and dipped her fingers 
into the water as it purled along towards the cascade. 
Each sat spellbound in the other’s presence, bound- 
lessly free, yet chained absolutely as with fetters. 
Diana felt a long shudder pass through her companion ; 
to the nice ear of sympathy, emotion is clearly mani- 
fested. Then he unloosed his arms and stood up. 
Diana rose, too, her eyes cast down under delicately 
tremulous lids. She was conscious of a hand upon her 
shoulder, and a voice in her ear which said, with the 
infinitude of tenderness, — 

“ I told you too, once, that love is eternal. God 
knows how true this is ; but man is weak, Diana ; and 
it is only in his conscious weakness that he finds his 
best strength.” The fairy-like cascade broke its jewels 
26 * 


u 


306 


DIANA FONTAINE . 


into the hollow stone, the stream pressed on restlessly, 
every sound of the water seemed a heart-throb ; yet 
how eternally cold was the message delivered by the 
Nymphen-See, for the crackling of the tree-limbs, the 
crunching of feet against dry moss, and then a long, 
aching silence told Diana Fontaine that she was alone. 


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